Redemption Part-1

by DNA

Some women take an interest in offering Maximus a new life. He's a little reluctant to accept their help. Will be added to subsequent parts as time and research allow. If critiquing, be merciful please--this is my first time working with this.

1. Chapter Two

Note to those who read this: Thank you so much for the encouragement to everyone who reviewed the first chapter of this story. This is going to be a rather extended project of mine, as I've hit my first round of exams this semester. I hope the Muses are kind, and give me ample opportunity to study and write, but as we all know, time is at a minimum these days. I suppose I ought to include a disclaimer…all things Dreamworks, bah, blah. Don't bother suing because you won't get anything. I'm on Financial Aide, meaning you'd be suing the government anyway. Besides, if Hollywood can mess with history, I don't see why I can't either. And I have to admit, mess with history I did, especially by warping time just a bit. My history for this story-line is a little schizoid, meaning I've split some of the events taking place between 182-185 C.E., and those which took place after Commodus' death in 192, and sort of combined them to suit my needs.

As before, please be merciful…I'm still new to the writing thing. Constructive suggestions always welcome, and actually, I have to admit I had different plans for Lucilla in the original draft of this story until someone asked if she and our hero would meet again. Alas, she was to be murdered as actually happened in the history books, but I've decided to keep her around…not necessarily to get back with Maximus, but to definitely meet up again. However, I've had to revise one of the dream sequences that occur because of that, and it's taking me long to post. Sorry for the delay

Further note: There's not much action happening throughout this Part 1. Understand, the intent is meant as more of a character study into a man who has become disillusioned by the world he is living in, and must find some new purpose/inspiration in which to carry on with the next road he will walk. It's also meant as an intro to the characters of Nemhyn and Maeve, along with allusions to future characters who will be appearing in Part 2…provided I stay motivated and don't flunk out of school because I've been trying to split my time between this and studying.

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Redemption-Part I

Spring going into summer 182 C.E.

"Can you help him," the woman asked, her eyes shadowed by grief and worry.

Given the surrounding darkness, the cavernous interior of the underground passage beneath the Circus

Maximus, one would have thought such emotion undistinguishable in the dim light.

The other woman looked back at her with unwavering ice-pale eyes that caught the glow of a single mounted

torch, eyes that were used to seeing far more than what was only revealed upon the faces of men and women.

"He is not dead then." There was no surprise in her words, no need of affirming what she had already known,

probably before even the other woman suspected.

"No," was the answer. "He is very near it though, so much so that everyone else thinks he walks the fields of

Elysium." Her voice was low, her words thickened by strain and tears. For all of that, she still retained a tight hold

on her composure. A lovely, frail seeming woman, her clean patrician features schooled to calm despite the

evident tension of her words.

"We will examine him," the other woman said, beckoning behind with a small wave of her hand. The one she

addressed started, as a third figure, hooded, stepped from the indecipherable darkness of a corner to join them.

"No need for alarm. It's only my daughter, a fellow healer, and my respected equal," she reassured.

The new member pulled back the covering of her hair, allowing the one who appealed to them for aide to study

her for a moment. "I'm sorry," she said in fluent Latin, stringing the syllables of the words together in the lilting

accent of the island. "I did not mean to startle you, my mother and I felt it best to keep my presence concealed

until we knew it was indeed you who summoned us."

Lucilla nodded, the gold of her earrings lighting to flame as they reflected the torchlight, the color matching the

stray tresses escaping from the braid of the daughter. "Haste is imperative. Two servants, loyal to me, await in

an alley out back. We have the robes and masks of priestesses so you may move about with no one suspecting

your identity. Few dare to question those who prepare the bodies for last rights."

Maeve, the mother, inclined her head, indicating for the other woman to lead the way. Nothing more was said, as

they prepared themselves for what could be contrived as an act of sacrilege and high treason.

An hour later, when all was ready, and they were fully concealed in garb and mask, mother and daughter walked

up the steps of the sacred Citadel with the supposed familiarity of ones who had grown up within its walls. Led by

Lucilla, they came before the funeral pyre, that would burn come midnight, releasing the soul of the man who

rested upon it, still in death, his skin waxen and colorless beneath beard and blood. A momentary panic seemed

to overtake her. "You must be quick about this. They have yet to prepare him for his ceremony, and someone is

sure to return soon. If they should come upon us..."

Nemhyn, the daughter, caught Lucilla's hand in her own, a gesture of reassurance and strength from which the

other seemed to draw calm once more. "Hush," she whispered. "It will do no good to rush this. If he is indeed

dead, we do no more harm than has already been."

Maeve bent over the inert body upon the pyre, her hands moving over a grime encrusted tunica to feel along the

wounds of chest and side. She pressed hard along the edges of sword-inflicted injuries, feeling, with some

surprise, a gaping opening on his left side made by a dagger. She remembered no penetrating stab inflicted

upon the man during the fight. But then, she had been seated, not as a noble woman, close to the arena's edge,

but higher in the stands with the other common folk.

She seemed not aware of the other two persons standing just behind her, listening intently for breath, looking for

the slight, deceptive rise and fall of his chest. Nothing, or so it seemed to her. Her hands moved long the

uninjured arm, coming to rest at his wrist, feeling for a the fluttering indication that not all his blood had spilt out on

the ground, that some still might be moving through his body.

With a shake of her head, a sign her daughter had come to know well over the years as one of disappointment at

not being able to do anything more for those who had moved beyond the world of the living, she moved to place

the man's hand gently back over this stomach, where it had rested.

And paused, just as she was about to release it. Something, she thought. Somthing had been there. Barely a

quiver under her fingers, like a butterfly's wings in the palm of a hand. She held longer, pressing more carefully.

"Daughter," she said, "come feel this."

Nemhyn took the place of her mother, Lucilla following closely behind her, staring with an intensity that willed him

to truly be alive. To convince herself that what she thought she had seen out on the sand of the arena, kneeling

over him amongst rose petals and blood, had not been a whimsy of her imagination. That she had indeed heard

a faint sigh of breath, albeit shallow and weak as he slipped into an unconsciousness resembling death.

"The pulse...it's weak...thready as Galen would describe it, but it's there. I'm not sure for how much longer

though," Lucilla heard the daughter concur.

She scarcely let herself believe what they were saying. "You mean...," she exhaled in a sudden exultant joy, "you

mean he's alive. Truly?"

Maeve nodded, her expression bearing no sign of the other woman's happiness. "I make no promises. My

daughter and I will do what we can for him, but we must get him away from here."

Lucilla agreed, her brief joy extinguished in the urgency of the moment. "My men have a wagon out back. It's

fortunate the ides of May are upon us and most of the temple clergy are attending to the festivities. If the gods are

with us, we can borne him away with little notice."

"Underground passages," came Nemhyn's query.

Lucilla gave the daughter a sad smile. "My brother and I used to play in them as children. It was my way of

showing him there was nothing of the dark to fear."

"Indeed, the dark is our friend tonight," said Maeve. "But the emptiness of a funeral pyre occupied only an hour

before will still be quite obvious."

Lucilla gave the older woman a considering look. "You needn't worry. Arrangements have been made for that."

She caught the expression in Maeve's eyes. "Don't condemn me for the actions I have been driven to," she

exclaimed bitingly. "One more life lost in this never-ending tragedy will make little difference when weighed on the

scales of sins I am already responsible for. Palace slaves are sold and replaced all the time with little notice."

"Was it necessary to add more one more death to a river over-flowing with the blood of your city's citizens,"

asked Maeve contemptuously. "Even for such a man as this."

With scarce less disdain in her voice, Lucilla replied, "For such a man as this I would have sacrificed the entire

city of Rome. One slave who does nothing with his days but scour the floors upon which the feet of the nobility

walk ought to be glad to replace such a life as this."

She moved to direct the other two women carrying their unwieldy burden down a shadowed hallway, and into a

corridor descending to the ancient rubble of steps leading underneath the ground level floor.

"Regardless of what station your slave held, he was still innocent," Maeve insisted coldly.

With a voice that sounded like brittle glass echoing down the lonely corridors through which they moved, Lucilla

only said, "Be that as it may. It is too late to argue his innocence or his value beyond that of replacing what would

have Maximus' place upon the pyre. The deed is done. From here on, your concern is to ensure this one we carry

now lives."

Maeve held her tongue to that. Long ago, she had learned her views, those held by her people, were unusual

compared to the strict laws that governed Rome, particularly the actions of the elite. It was futile to belabor a point

against one who was utterly convinced of her privileged place in society, knowing that that place entitled her to

rights seperating her from the common run of the Empire's populace. She was Caeser's daughter. The older

woman realized, because of that fact, her actions might be justified in terms of serving her late father's wishes for

renewing the Republic, and of saving the life of the man whom they were now carrying. Yet, her appallment

regarding the callousness of Roman nobility for other's below their station never lessened whenever she was

forced to encounter it.

Her daughter, she knew, was of much the same opinion, if the faint hiss of disproval from behind her was

anything to judge by.

The body they carried through the dank, deserted corridors under the arena was heavy, and it was awkward

making their way through the poorly lit passage without causing the man further injury. They, Maeve and her

daughter, were strong women though, and understanding the imperative of haste, made no request to stop for a

rest. Not that Lucilla thought to ask, but then, she was quite aware of the urgency to get him away from Rome as

well.

They emerged, coming up from the underground passage via another stairwell which had stood long in ruin and

neglect; benefits that worked to their advantage on this night of pressing secrecy. As Lucilla had said, the wagon

was there, her two servants waiting beside it, in the back-alley behind a stretch of stone-walled fencing which

must have sectioned off courtyards, or gardens, in a neighborhood of well-to-do residencies.

Lucilla's servants said nothing, but assisted the women to get the lifeless form of the man into the wagon without

a word from their mistress. They were oddly unreceptive to any statement of thanks Maeve's daughter gave

them.

Maeve looked at them askance, then to Lucilla. "They're deaf mutes. An advantage I'm sure you can appreciate,"

the woman explained. Daughter of one Caeser and brother to another, she had learned at an early age, the tools

of intrigue and how to cover her own involvement in it. Marcus Aurelius's daughter was no fool. She knew what it

was to be a woman of power in this world dominated by men and their wars, and how best to wield the reigns of

her influence to the benefit of those she wished to help.

Maeve acknowledged her explanation with a not quite appraising look, one which Lucilla responded to with a

slight tilt of her head, and an elegantly arched brow before moving to the back of the wagon for a last farewell to

the one man who had ever held her respect and her love. "Stay strong Maximus. You will hate me for this...for

taking you away from them one more time. But you must live. There is still too much for you to do here." She

kissed him once on his begrimed forehead, his skin cold and clammy to her lips, then backed off the wagon.

Maeve and Nemhyn were seated, the daughter holding the reigns in her hands, ready at a word to be on their

way. The older woman looked down at Lucilla from her perch on the wagon's hard wood seat. "Do not fear for

him. We have a place to go where none would think to seek him should anyone suspect our actions."

Lucilla caught the older woman's hand in her own suddenly, taking Maeve slightly aback. "You can not imagine

my gratitude to you for this. I have no doubt in your abilities. Please, teach him that my father's dream is not dead,

that Rome is still a beacon upon which to guide the rest of the world, even if Her city withers in her own

corruption." There were renewed tears in her eyes, but her voice remained steady. "I wounded him deeply this

last time."

Maeve's words were rarely meant to comfort, but she was moved, inexplicably by the other woman's sudden

candor. "We are often driven to make choices we otherwise would not when forced to protect those we love. The

hardest thing is deciding between those whom we simply love, and those whom we love and must guard. He will

come to understand the motivations behind your actions, and learn to live with them."

Lucilla bowed her head, kissing the older woman's hands in gratitude before releasing them. "I do not think the

judgement of my actions will be long in coming. Whatever our differences of opinion, I know you work toward the

vision of my father's dream just as Maximus did, and hopefully will again. I will not delay you longer. Please go,

and know you travel with my blessing, whatever that may be worth."

"I think, Lucilla, that it is worth a great deal," Maeve said with solemn regard. The woman she looked down upon

only smiled, a sad turn of her lips that was gone as quickly as it had appeared, stubborn moisture escaping down

her cheeks from her sad, sad eyes.

Those were the last words they spoke to each other, as Maeve settled herself back in her place. She nodded to

her daughter, who needed no more urging, giving the reins a crisp snap, and set their wagon into motion.

Lucilla, daughter of one Caeser, brother to another stood straight, holding herself to a stillness that permeated

her entire being, her quiet sorrow piercing her heart anew as she watched the wagon slowly make its way into the

quiet of the city's evening. As she had learned to do in the years under Commodus' shadow, she shielded her

grief from the world under the trappings of royal facade, her face bearing a distant expression of authoritative

dignity. She had no doubt Maeve and her daughter would be able to get past the night watch with their precarious

burden. How they would do it, she hadn't a clue, but she had no doubt they would be successful.

Sighing, she turned to face her servants. With nothing more than a motion of her hand, they fell into step behind

her as they made their way back through the winding streets of the residential district, to the Capitoline Hill and

the Palace, wherein she knew she would face the newly erupting upsets of a Senate with no order, a throne with

no Caesar, and a Praetorian Guard who ruled them all.

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Dio Seco, a small village outside Ravenna, one week later.

He could smell the hay-scented sweetness of the ripening wheat, rich in autumn's early harvest. He waded

through it, his heart quickening with anticipation as the distant figures, one taller, slim--obviously a woman,

pointed in his direction for the smaller figure by her side, a child. He felt joy, and another emotion, that, for a

moment he was hard-put to describe.

Peace. That was it. Peace as he hadn't felt for years. Since he was a child.

No, even before then. Since he had rested sound in the dark, humming quiet of his mother's womb, secure in the

safety of life's center, unknowing of its harshness, of the uncertainties of the future.

Here, in this land of sunlight and endless fields of wheat that seemed to go on until the land itself touched the sky,

there was no future. No past. No time. No concerns.

There was, however, his wife and his son, whose beloved features became more distinct as he walked closer to

them. His hand brushed the top of the wheat stalks, treasuring their texture, feeling the warmth of the sun on his

face, and glorying in the sight of his wife's black mane of hair blowing in the gentle breeze as she bent over her

son's shoulder, laughing and whispering, motioning in his direction.

He stopped a few arm lengths away from them, simply to watch for a moment before closing the distance and

gathering each of them in his arms as he had so wished to do in life. His wife straightened, her smile beaming,

pearlescent teeth, white against the darkness of her sun-golden skin. It held the secrets of what she would do with

him later, that smile, when their son was asleep in the vast reaches of the dreamworld.

Do people sleep in the land of the dead, he wondered offhandedly for a moment. Then thought no more of it.

His son spoke then, a question perhaps, though it sounded strangely distant and muted to his ears, at odds with

the visual vibrancy of the world around him. He shook his head, indicating he hadn't understood, and laughingly,

he began to move forward again.

Only to find that he couldn't. His feet were held fast to the ground. Annoyed, he tried to move again, and again, his

effort proved futile. He looked into his wife's face questioningly, his blood beginning to pound in his ears as he

tried to keep his annoyance from turning to confused panic.

He reached out his hand to her, tried to ask for help, but his effort to speak was no more successful than his effort

to close the distance between them. He could feel his frown of confusion turn to alarm as she, still smiling, but

now with the shadow of regret upon her brow, began to shake her head slowly.

Not yet, she mouthed. Not yet. His son's confusion mirrored his own as he saw the boy look up at his mother,

and back at his father who still stood immobile.

And suddenly, what he could only describe as a pulling upon his being, a feeling of being sucked into a whirlpool,

the likes of which were said to guard the great pillars of the Bosphorus Straits, was drawing him back. Away from

his beloved and his son. Away from his family, this beautiful world of sun-touched wheat. This world of peace, joy,

gentle breezes and honey-scented wind.

NO!!!!!, he tried to shout in anguish, resisting with the very force of his soul as the world began to break down

into a coalescence of shimmering light and darkness, moving past him, with terrifying speed. The images of his

wife and his son were the last things to disappear, in the vortex of whirling light, as they turned away, to wait and

do as the dead did in the land of their own making.

For what business did the dead have with the living, even if they had been well loved and cherished.

NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! A cry that seemed to echo across eternity.

And become the force of breath in reluctant lungs, the cry of grief assailing his ears as air rattled down his

windpipe.

"Mother...mother," a voice, somewhere to his side and behind , spoke in suprise. "He's awake, I think. Where is

that tincture you made up this morning?"

Movement on this other side prompted him to slowly open his eyes. He didn't want to. He wanted to remain in

that land of sunlight and wheat, to be where his wife and son were.

What he found, instead, as the senses of living slowly revived themselves to the world, was that he lay on his back in

a dark room lit only by a single oil lamp, placed on a table by his head.

He became aware of a sudden, acute sensation pain, ripping like hot coals through his left side, from his arm

and across his upper chest and back. He couldn't remember breathing ever causing him this much distress, and

half in instinct, half in reluctance to further distance himself from the brillance of the afterlife, he tried to keep his

exhalations and inhalations to a minimum.

Through blurred eyes still more accustomed to the brightness of the otherworld, now accomodating the dimness

of shadows dancing across low raftered beams of wood that made up ceiling and walls, he began to distinguish

the indistinct features of the two figures standing on either side of where he lay. One of them, her hair dark brown,

or black, reached to the table and picked up a small ointment jar, ensuring its lid stayed in place as she shook its

contents gently. All the while he knew each of them, women he could now tell, were scrutinizing him carefully.

"No," he whispered again, his eyes closing to the tears that began to seep from the corners of his eyes. All his

life, he had been raised to believe it unmanly to show grief in front of women. Those values, Roman to their very

core, he no longer cared for. He did not know them, these women, and they did not know what they had taken him

from. A world of sunlight and peace. A world where his wife and son had been waiting for his eager arrival.

The woman who had been holding the small, glazed container, frowned with disquiet at him, pouring some of the

liquid from the jar, into a cup. "Nemyhn, give this amount to him when he is ready for it," she said as she handed

the cup to the other woman across the bed. "Make sure he drinks it to completion, even if he resists. It's

necessary if he does not want another bout with that fever." The other woman nodded her understanding, pulling

up a chair next to the cot, as though she sensed the struggle it would take to persuade him to accept their care.

He opened his eyes again, ignoring the woman who sat next to him, his sole attention focused on the one who

had spoken as she gathered various miscellaneous objects into small wooden box with the business-like

efficiency of familiar motion. She returned his look with steadied calm, not outwardly bothered by the deep pain

she saw in eyes that were shaded to a stony grey in the dim light of the hut.

"I won't take it." His voice, though weak in pitch, was determined in tone. She heard her daughter sniff audibly in

annoyance at his comment. It was a habit she had retained from her childhood, and had never been broken of.

The calm of her eyes seemed reflected in her voice. "You wish to die then?" It was a simple question really, one

that most responded to with passionate denial, but that he answered with far too much willingness.

"I wish to be where my family is."

"It's common to believe so when we have walked the otherworld and have seen our loved ones. All we remember

is the calm of Elysium. Such is the blessing of the dead that they have none of the concerns of the living." She

paused, perhaps to give him time to react to her statement.

"Why did you call me back?" His voice was weak, an unwilling sob, such as the kind men were apt to make

causing his words to come out choked. "I was given permission to go in peace to them. She told me. My duty

here had been done."

The woman who was standing spoke. "I did not call you back. I only wish my powers were so great, but not even I

can stand against the will of Cerridwen when she wishes her own to come to her. You came back on your own,

because you were not ready to die, and the Fates were not yet done weaving your thread." Her voice, its soft

tones filling the air between them, revealed that she was keen to his pain, but it remained firm. "You will live, and

in time, even you will heal. As for why my daughter and I struggled these last days to save you...it is our duty to do

so. Our aide was sought, and we had no choice but to comply."

He made no reply to that, simply closed his eyes to her again, turning to face away from both women, seeking

escape to some inner sanctuary.

Overlooking his obvious disregard of her, the woman explained, "I must go now. Another family in this village

requires my attention. If you have need of anything, my daughter will provide," she said, nodding faintly in the

direction of the seated woman. With that she turned, and ducked under the hovel's small entrance, the lamp's

glinting light reflecting off the smooth wood of the box she held in her arms.

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Redemption-Chp2, Book 1

Nemyhn kept staring at the entrance from whence her mother left a few moments before, wishing in no small part, she might have accompanied her. She usually found satisfaction in tending the needs of the sick or injured, having inherited the inclination from her mother. This man, though, was different than those she'd helped in the past. While his injuries were serious, she had known other patients to recover from far worse cases of physical impairment. Even the fever which developed three days ago, had not been so dire as to be beyond the capabilities of her or her mother to nurse him through, and finally broke this evening, as his body overcame infection. Physically, he would recuperate, given time, sufficient rest, and nourishment. It was the will that was lacking, the complete absence of desire to partake in his own recovery, mirrored in his evident sorrow over being separated from those he loved.

They who existed only in the world where the living did not walk.

She turned these thoughts over in her mind, thinking of the most convincing way to persuade him into taking the medication . He was faced away, not appearing to take notice of her presence, making Nemyhn feel like an intruder upon his private grief. She'd never been adept at dealing with others' extreme displays of emotion, believing that people ought to have the privacy they required to mourn. For the moment, however, there was no way out of this-he was weak and required assistance, and she was the only one available to provide it. Whether he wished to accept her help or not.

That awareness made her sigh in resignation, realizing with a sinking sensation in her stomach, that the evening could draw long if his persistence in ignoring her continued.

The sound of it must have been audible. He roused from the silent path he had been walking, turning to study her with accusing eyes, as though confirming what only moments before, she'd been thinking herself: That she was an unwelcome audience to his private bereavement.

"Are you here for a reason," he asked hoarsely.

She saw the look of pain cross his features as he spoke, the concentration he paid to his shallow breathing, coupled with the instinctual tendency to minimize his movements, not exacerbating his injuries. She offered him the cup, saying gruffer than she might have liked, "If you would take this, it will help ease the pain of our wounds until they have fully healed."

She recoiled in unanticipated rebuff, at his sudden outpouring of bitter words. "What would you know of my wounds? You should learn to leave the dead in peace and not meddle with the Fates."

Regardless of his obvious weakness, she recovered quickly from her astonishment at his unexpectedly cutting comment, her temper pricked. "I know," she said heatedly, "that your injuries included a stab wound to your left side, a sword cut across your left shoulder and back, along with multiple abrasions and cracked ribs on both sides of your torso.

"I also know you developed a fever four days into my mother and I caring for you, and that we fought these last three for your life.

"And Spaniard, "she spit out in a low, angered tone, the title catching him off-guard, the emptiness of his gaze replaced by a fleeting look of surprise, "I know that if the plains of Hades had truly wished to keep you, you would not be here now."

She was mistaken. It hadn't been surprise that crossed his face just now, but an answering fury of his own, greatly dulled by his current condition no doubt, but no less obvious for that. "The last time someone brought me back form the otherworld, I awoke a man without a family, who's wife and son were murdered, named deserter, and as such, made a slave to the Empire. What have I to thank you and your mother for in calling me back a second time."

His words were those of a man who had struggled long to come to grips with a world he saw as having betrayed his ideals. His belief in the nobler acts of humanity had been whittled away in light of the harsh life he'd led over these last years. She felt compassion for the losses he must have suffered, but it was a distant, removed feeling. This man had woken to better circumstances than many of those nameless others she and her mother helped--the multitudes of over-worked slaves, mal-nourished peasants, and disease-ridden indigents; those who made up the majority of the Empire's populace, whose lives were controlled by the small circle of the Empire's powerful elite. His refusal to use the life returned to him dampened what pity she might have felt.

He did not seem like one who would welcome sympathy in any case.

He watched her with a hard gaze as she stalked to the other side of the bed in an effort to contain her ire, kneeling to meet him at eye-level, careful of the cup and its contents. "I'm not asking for your thanks, " she said bluntly. She nodded toward the entrance of the hovel where outside, evening was falling fast, the sounds of the last songbirds filtering through the doorway. "To the world, the gladiator is dead. You are a freeman once more."

"Am I," he responded scornfully, taking a labored breath. "I've no name, no status, no station in this world any longer." His voice dropped in pitch, and she had to strain to hear his next words. "General or slave, I once had a purpose and knew my duty. Now, I no longer have any responsibility…". He broke off in hushed defeat.

…And so I ought to be dead. The words, unspoken, seemed to ring loudly, inviting the shadows of the hut to gather around and threaten with the finality of Death's inevitable silence.

With stubborn fortitude, Nemhyn refused to succumb to the sudden dour mood surrounding them. She could feel twinges of a headache coming on as she tried to speak past her increasing frustration. She rocked forward to come but centimeters away from his face, meeting his gaze unflinchingly. "Look, I know little of your life, but I am aware you have lost more than most, and did not come away unscathed."

He said nothing, his eyes burning in empty resentment. She continued. "This world is a savage place and very often, an endless existence of drudgery for most of Her inhabitants who wake at dawn, barely a meal away from starvation, chilled to the bone, suffering from lung pleurisy on a winter's night. Those are the people my mother and I try to aide. The one's most physicians' overlook because they are too poor to pay out the fees of men who proclaim their loyalty to Hippocrates while, in truth, they serve the greed of their own purses. For all of their apparent misery though, there is not one of those whom we have ever helped--slave, tenant farmer, or country wife--who has refused a second chance when they have been turned away from the shores of the Styx." She leaned back upon finishing, resting her head against the wall, closing her eyes to relieve the pounding between her temples.

Something in her words must have hit a resonant chord in him, for he was watching her now with cautious regard, as though considering the meaning of her words for the first time. "Why have you and your mother taken such an interest in saving my life, " he asked in a voice laden with the effort to speaking.

She opened her eyes to study him, ignoring his question for the moment. "You're feeling your injuries badly?"

In unwilling reluctance, he nodded, not trying to disguise the physical discomfort he was in. He was a strong man, and young still, maybe thirty at most. He might have been a slave, but he'd been well-fed and whole, his physical conditioning revealing the value Rome placed on the gems of Her gross entertainments. Blood loss, infection, and subsequent fever had taken its toll, in spite of the care she and her mother had provided. His face was drawn under 7 days growth of beard, and his eyes were shadowed by weariness. His current condition would only inhibit a full recovery, not to mention invite another onset of fever..

She lifted the cup to him again, moving to face him. "If you take this, it will help immensely, I promise you." He looked at the cup as he might a serpent in her hand. "And, she added tentatively, I will tell you as much as I can about how my mother and I came across you."

Still eyeing her with suspicion, he asked, "We're bargaining now," a slight smile playing quickly across his lips, not reflected in his gaze. "My life for a piece of information."

"If you don't take it, your fever might return," she explained, annoyed. "Another bout with that and my mother and I may not be able to keep you from being rowed across the Styx a second time."

It wasn't a threat, but he seemed to take it as one, responding in a voice that set her on edge with its dangerous undertone. "Don't think to coerce me by threatening harm. I've faced death many times-

Fuming, she slammed the cup down cutting him off unexpectedly, as she took unorthodox advantage of his weakened state to silence him by clamping a firm hand over his mouth, saying, "And apparently welcome its outcome,"

His eyes widened in surprise, and she could see his nostrils flare, the effort of breathing already compounded by his bruised torso, and now, restricted to exhaling and inhaling through his nose. She was still angered enough to not be intimidated by the blazing fury which lit his eyes at the indignity she caused him. "I swear by the Holy Mother, if I hear you blather one time more about how you ought to have been left to die, I will not only add to your injuries by boxing your ears, but shame us both by slapping you like some child."

She took a deep breath to calm herself, not removing her hand just yet, as the continued in a more even voice, "I wasn't threatening you. You spoke of duty-well I am only trying to do mine, and that is to see you get well. You are making my attempt exceedingly difficult though. I need your cooperation, Spaniard. Will I have it? Will you take the liquid in this cup or must I stand here adding to your distress while you act like some wayward child?"

Silence ensued as she waited for his response, the hum of evening insects filling the tense quiet of the hut. He labored to breath through the hand over his mouth, preventing the sharp reply she was sure stood ready at the tip of his tongue.

She was beginning to regret her rather rash move, his incensed expression animated by the acute discomfort she was causing him. What she wanted was some indication, a nod perhaps, communicating his concession in this ridiculous battle of wills.

He made no move though, no sound beyond his labored breathing, to reflect anything like compliance. Until she saw his shoulders begin to shake suddenly. She felt the suction of air against her hand as he tried to draw breath past it, exhaling in muffled gasps. Alarmed, she drew back the palm that covered his mouth, thinking for a panicked second, her action had sent him into some sort of spasm.

Then she noticed, belatedly, the tears seeping past moist eyes, the hint of a grin upon his lips, and the laughter in his barely audible voice. "Woman, if this is typical of your bed-side manner, you must have great success with all the people you help. Death itself would be foolish to tempt your wrath by stealing away patients under your care."

Perplexed by his sudden turn of mood, she slumped back against the wall, her fatigue from the last week catching up with her all of the sudden. "Are you mocking me, " she asked, baffled, the herbal infusion, his stubbornness, forgotten for the moment.

Again, a slight chuckle, curtailed by his effort to induce air into is lungs. "No," he choked on the word somewhat. "I've enough wounds to last for the rest of the year at least. Why invite more injury un-necessarily?"

"So you wish to take the medicine now," she asked in hesitant hope, thinking that maybe the evening wouldn't be lasting so long after all.

The moment the words were out of mouth, she knew her wish was not to be fulfilled. The passing humor that seemed to lighten his features became, once more, one of cautious consideration. He wasn't ready to capitulate quite yet. "We were bargaining before you decided to silence me. Quite effectively I might add."

While not regretting her action, She did have the grace to look slightly ashamed, but not for long as his next words caught her prompt attention "If I take your medicine, you will answer me two things."

With an assessing gaze, she cocked her head to the side. "I'm listening."

"You will tell me why you and your mother have taken such an interest in saving my life, and why you have come all the way from the northern islands to do so."

She couldn't hide the look of amazement that crossed her face at mention of his revelation of her homeland. Apparently he'd been observing more than she had suspected, lost in his personal sorrow as he'd seemed. It began to dawn on her why he had been one of the highest placed officers in the Empire. His astuteness for gleaning the unspoken nuances of situations was not dimmed, even amidst physical and emotional distraction. Such persons knew how to take bits and pieces of facts that fell their way, and put together a larger picture of what those facts veiled

In truth, she and her mother didn't really have anything to hide. It just wasn't the right time to reveal their proposal to him yet.

Leaning onto her knees to face him, she swirled the cup's contents. "First the medicine. Then I'll tell you what you wish to hear."

He wasn't swayed, challenge alighting his eyes. "Tell me, first, what I've asked to know, and then the medicine."

With a loud sigh, she said, "Fine. My mother and I are healers. You were injured, our assistance was required and we performed our duty. We are from Britannia as you guessed, but the line of work my mother and I do takes us to the far corners of the Empire."

"Is that how you came to be in Rome on the day I fought Commodus?" It was asked with neutral inquiry, but she knew he was fishing for more information.

"Yes," she confirmed tersely. It was true in its way, even if the motivation behind their journeying here was more complex than the reason she gave him. "Medicinal herbs come to Rome from all over the world. There are many found in Her markets that can not be obtained on the far shores of my homeland."

He studied her in the dimness of the oil lamps flickering light, weighing her response with a measuring gaze she found hard not to fidget under. To her credit, she kept her hands still, finding distraction by proffering the cup once more, brows raised in expectancy.

Despite his difficulty with movement, he waved the cup away weakly with an impatient gesture. "There's more behind this you're not telling me. Why," he demanded.

She cursed herself inwardly at that before trying to assume an air of insulted integrity. "Why," she repeated in a semblance of puzzlement. "Why do you think there's any more beyond what I'm telling you?'

That brought a smile, unexpectedly, to his lips again, one that almost touched his eyes this time. She knew it was at her expense. "Because. I've never been good at lying myself, and I can tell when others are uncomfortable dissembling. You happen to be one of the worst. You flushed horribly just now."

Nemhyn didn't know whether to be offended by his comment, or guilty of that which he'd caught her at. She hadn't been lying exactly, but there was more to her explanation than what she let on. For lack of anything better to say in her defense, she snapped, "If I'm bad at dissembling, perhaps it's because I've never cultivated the art of cloaking my words in double-meanings as you Romans have."

"No," he agreed equably, watching her reaction to his next words, "it's not an art too many of the barbarian tribes ever grew easy with."

She knew the words had been placed to sting, and sting they did, as she felt herself flush, all too aware, this time, of her rising color. It was an effort to overlook his implied insult, and she wished, not for the first time in her life, she had inherited her mother's unflappable temper, along with her healing talent. Caustically then, "You're right Spaniard. There is more I'm not telling you, but it is not my place to reveal it. My mother will explain all in time, but first you must regain your strength." She added before he could voice protest once more, "If you're as capable as you say, at telling when others are lying, then you also must know when they speak the truth. Believe me when I promise, we mean you no harm."

To her annoyance, it came out almost pleading, and for a moment, she thought he would simply close his eyes and turn away from her again. Instead, something in his expression, the stubborn set of his chin or the glint of refusal in his eyes, seemed to dissipate slowly, as though the sincerity of her words finally sank in. Tiredly he said only, "Let me have the tincture."

There was exhaustion in those simple words, his focused determination from moments before disappearing in light of his hollow, returning grief. She said nothing as she lifted the cup to his lips gently with a practiced hand, helping hi support himself as he leaned forward to drink.

He grimaced at its better taste, wiping his mouth as he lay back down on the cot with her help. "Thank you," she said, moved to acknowledge the favor he'd done her with plain courtesy. "That was easy enough considering the struggle it warranted."

He shot her a look that made her smile in her turn, a skeptical expression of rueful irony. Already, she could see his lids beginning to grow heavy. "You didn't say anything about a sleeping potion," he accused drowsily. "You said, only, it would help the pain and keep the fever from returning."

"It will," she re-assured. "Bit it will also help you sleep. You need the rest, and you'll feel much improved on the morrow."

He fought the effects of the medication a few moments more. "What is your name?"

"Nemyhn," she answered readily, "and my mother's is Maeve." As a sort of reconciliation, she offered, "I promised before, I would tell you some of how my mother and I came across you. Do you wish to hear it?"

He nodded, fighting to keep his eyes open.

So she told him of Lucilla's summons, the meeting in the dark corridors beneath the Circus Maximus, of carrying him off his funeral pyre, stealing away like thieves in the night, arriving outside Ravenna after two days of non-stop travel--a simple wagon driven by two peasant women and their sick servant. At least that was the guise they traveled under.

By the time she'd finished, saying softly, "Lucilla gave you back your life, Maximus," she thought he'd fallen asleep. He made no response to her last words, and she collected her sleeping mat, unrolling it beside the cot, stifling her yawn.

Enough time had passed that the oil lamp was beginning to smoke as the wick burned itself out, inviting the shadows of late evening closer.

Just as she closed her eyes, he startled her from her anticipated rest, mumbling somnolently, "If she did, it was an unwelcome gift, and a wasted effort. It will be strange walking amongst the living as a dead man."

They were not words of self-pity, but of trying to come to terms with a world he'd thought done with. He believed he had done all he could to fulfill the wishes of a deceased ruler. "I think you feel much too strongly, Spaniard, to be walking amongst the dead just yet. Regardless of how you convince yourself otherwise," she said in a low tone from her place on the floor. Her words fell on deaf ears for he made no response other than the deep, regular breathing of blessed sleep.

She closed her own eyes, seeking her desired retreat as well, thankful it would not be her persuading him to accompany them to Britannia. She wondered with sympathy if her mother knew what she was in for. The feeling was a transient one; it would serve her mother right, coming to heads with him, after what shed' been through the evening just past. That made her smile briefly, as sleep finally engulfed her last thought.

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He dreamt again. It was different this time; not dreams such as those who linger between life and death have—like his vista of sun-warmed wheat, where his wife laughed over the shoulder of his son. This one was a dream such as the living have, but with the coherence prophets described when they spoke of foretelling.

He and Marcus Aurelius were walking next to one another along a pebbled seacoast. A village of bleached stone, a distance off, rose up a pinnacle over-looking the wine-dark sea. Back from the rolling tide, the beach gradually become rocky grass-covered ground, rolling hills of scrub and weeds, rooted in the reddened sandstone. Groves of olive trees grew in bunches down the side of the hill from the village, and the beautiful morning glories bloomed in multi-hued wonder, their petals vivid purple, pink, and blue, their stems curling around smaller tree trunks, or poking out of crevices running along the rocky slopes.

They walked in companionable silence until his Emperor chose to face him. Maximus noticed the difference in the wizened face, a calm in his eyes that had always eluded the ruler in life, forced to contend with the pressures of ruling an Empire extending from the far northern isles, to the edges of the eastern deserts. A man who desired peace for the people under his rule, but had been forced to fight in defense of those people when their homes had come under attack from the barbarian hordes.

Something yanked the emperor's hand, making Maximus follow the motion with his eyes. What, or rather, who, he saw, initially shocked him. A shock gradually altering to a profound sadness in the space his heart had once occupied as he struggled to not be crushed by this last defeat.

The small figure of Lucius Verus greeted him with a boy's light laughter and a, "Hello, Spaniard," before ducking back to the other side of his grandfather.

He glanced at the man he'd' known in life as Caesar, looking into eyes full of a secret wisdom restricted to those who still walked amongst the living; the deep found peace of those who retain no regret fro the unfulfilled potential of their dreams.

"Who killed him," he found himself asking with a sick feeling in his gut.

As a father to his beloved son, Marcus Aurelius replied gently, "The Guard did…in vengeance for Lucilla's involvement in the plot against her brother."

"And Lucilla?" He dreaded the answer.

"She was spared," the shade of her father explained, "although she did try to take her won life because of it."

He gave the Emperor a wrenching look, one which the older man responded to with quick re-assurance.

"Quintus caught her in her room, just as she was about to drive a knife into her breast." The legendary way of Roman nobility choosing to exit the world when their circumstances had grown desperate.

They walked along the pebble-strewn beach in silence for a few moments, the lolling waves lapping at their feet, the cry of gulls filling the air in the distance with their harsh calls. Lucius had run up ahead of them, chasing after the retreating waves, peeking under numerous water-smoothed stones for the rare shellfish or hermit crab. He watched the boy, so care-free in his delight, and wondered if his own son was the same way. If he was playing with the ponies outside of the home in his own Elysium.

He envied all of them--his wife, his son, Lucius, the Emperor--this peace, wishing once again, he might have had the fortune to stay and share it with them.

"No, you don't," Marcus Aurelius said in quiet patience, his tone definite. "The world needs you still, as much as you claim not to care for it."

"And the world didn't need you, although you left it pre-maturely?" It came out accusing. He hadn't meant it that way.

"Just like you Maximus," the older man said fondly, "to rage at the unforeseen tragedies of life even after they have happened."

"It should never have happened at all." The words carried on the slight breeze which blew from the sea.

"Ah, the words of the perfect idealist," spoke the Emperor, unbothered by the younger man's growing irritation. "I was already a dying man when my son killed me. What more I might have done for the Empire would have been cut short in any case. It is up to those who are still living to carry on where the Dream was left off."

There was real venom in his voice when Maximus replied, "I too, have been a dying man since the day I found my wife and son hanging brutalized and murdered from the eaves of my home. And your Dream vanished old man, upon your daughter's betrayal, made apparent when I faced you son in the arena. There is no more Dream, no more idea of Rome."

His words seems to draw an odd glamour across the face of Marcus Aurelius, a look that deepened the man's gaze, casting a veiled shadow over one eye, despite the brilliant sunlight overhead. He looked away quickly, unsure of what he saw, but feeling that if he'd stared longer, his soul would have been engulfed by the depth of that eye, a well of darkness reflecting the inner workings of men, even as the other eye, the outward one, shone with the luminance of eternity.

"Is there, Maximus. Is there no more idea of Rome, " the Old Man repeated in the fuller resonance of the Shining Ones.

The younger man stiffened at the tones of the Immortal, making no reply, watching Lucius up ahead chase a pair of gulls on the beach, purposefully avoiding the Other's eyes.

The Old Man continued, "You are wrong about that. Every age has its Rome, and every Rome its savior. The world changes. When the old Rome falls, a new one will eventually rise up from the dust of her ashes, continuing the Dream. Are you willing to change with it, Maximus, before the day comes when She is vanquished forever, drowned in the barbarian horde."

That made him glance at the figure next to him, only for a moment, catching glimpses of disturbing images in the Other's eyes; of armies not Roman, but fighting with Roman technique, attired in the garb of the nomads, over-running country villas, pillaging villages and burning fertile fields of grain and corn from the backs of their rugged step-ponies. Cities, once populated with thousands of inhabitants from all over the world, lay in ruin, the charred remains of a temple or an aqueduct the only evidence the place had ever seen human habitation. Bodies strewn in a wreck of destruction such as the world had yet to know, wild dogs scavenging amongst the ruins, scattered survivors clothed in tatters that had once been rich apparel, competing wit the animals for the scant food available.

These were not things he wanted to see, and he glanced away again, frightened, but not wanting to admit so. "Let her die, then," he snarled through his sudden apprehension. "I am no savior of empires."

"No savior of Empires, perhaps." With relief, Maximus heard the human tones of his Emperor return, "But salvager of a Republic…now that is an entirely different Idea."

He'd never walked in the presence of a god before, and it had not been a pleasant experience. Not that visiting with the dead is much more common place, he realized in irony.

"You made me swear an oath once, to protect Rome. You didn't tell me the price would be the death of my wife and son, my friends, the loss of my freedom. " The words came tumbling off his tongue in a stream of infuriated blame. "I did my duty to you by trying to ensure the safety of your grandson, so he might one day inherit a throne based on justice and the beliefs of the Republic, yet he runs before us as dead as I was meant to be. No more, Caesar. I have failed, and I if I am dead to Rome, so let Her be dead to me!"

"You may not wish to hear this Maximus, but alas, it will not leave you alone—the women who saved your life, my daughter included, will not let it leave you alone. The strength of Rome may rest in her government, her legions, but Her heart is in Her people—and whether She is a Republic in form or in name only, it is those people you must think of when you refuse to salvage Her ideals before the light goes out forever."

Maximus stopped abruptly, his irritation reaching critical mass as he exclaimed hotly, "Let me be old man. What I do with the rest of my life will not be done in service to the Empire."

Marcus Aurelius, with the patient, fostering voice had had used in life when confronting the younger man's adamant temper, said, "Maximus…not all people are as ruthless as my son was. There are still a few good who work to preserve Roma Mater with duty and honor. You may have to go the far reaches of Her territory to find them, but they are still there. Seek them out and help them…help them preserve Rome's enlightenment, her stability, the peace she has brought to a world living under one name, speaking a multitude of tongues before she falls once and for all, like an exhausted beast at the end of its strength."

"I won't," Maximus insisted with a tone like iron.

"You will," was Caesar's commanding response. "You must."

"No!" He growled in rising fury, not looking away as the disconcerting masque of the god fell once more over the features of Marcus Aurelius. Worlds, both inner and outer, reflected in depthless wells, light and dark, the visions of barbarian tides freezing his heart in dread.

"You must," the god repeated, not pleased by the defiance of a mere mortal.

It took daring to disobey the command of a god, but he risked it, saying through clenched teeth, "No," willing himself to hold the disconcerting vision of the Other, as the hands of Marcus Aurelius reached out, encircling his temples, the strength of the Immortal pushing the man to his knees.

"You must, Maximus."

"I will not hear this," he shouted, trying to shake his head, and break the steel grip of the god. He was locked though, for an unaccountable time, by that grip, trying unsuccessfully to find release from the unfaltering voice commanding him against his will, filling not only his ears, but his mind, the visions of destruction brimming his awareness to pain. He screamed in primal fury, an attempt to drown out the presence of the god, as He began to shake him in retribution for his insolence.

"Maximus." A new voice spoke, unembodied, interrupting the rush of images filling his head. "Maximus, wake up." He was being shaken on the shoulder.

And as lasting as his torment at the hands of the god had seemed, it ended immediately upon opening his eyes to the light of a new dawn, a painful surge of breath filling his lungs as he became aware once more of his physical injuries. The older woman, Maeve, stood by this side, helping him into a sitting position while the last dredges of his dream wore off, leaving him feeling as though he'd been swept ashore at the mercy of a sea-squall, bruised and battered, and little rested.

**************************************************************************************

When he was situated, his back against the rough headboard, she reached for a bowl and wooden spoon from the table, placing it in his hands before sitting back down. "There's no sleeping potion in this one, is there," he asked warily.

"No," she answered calmly, seating herself. The scent of the malted barely in the bowl made his stomach growl emabarressingly loud. He saw her lips twitch in amusement as she commented, "Seven days with little food does tend to make one hungry. The body has its own wisdom for survival, even if the will is lacking."

Disgruntled, he began to feed himself with his uninjured right arm, noticing with passing satisfaction his left side, while it still smarted where the sward slashes were, and the knife had been driven in, was not as painful as the night prior. Breathing too, seemed easier, though his bruised torso was still tender.

She watched him eat, carefully assessing the degree of his movement and returning strength with eyes nearly colorless, so light was their shade of blue. The eyes of a seeress looking into the distant furutre. Or, deciphering the deepest secrets of men's souls.

He finished the last drop with more gusto than he'd begun, the food pleasantly appetizing. She placed the emptied bowl on the table, reaching for an ointment jar and fresh bandages before seating herself next to him on the cot. He made no protest as she began to change his dressings, applying the poultice with deft fingers, feeling along his wounds with practiced skill.

The silence she worked in was not an uncomfortable one, for it allowed him a chance to study her as he hadn't had the night before, her features illuminated by the light of the Italian sun streaming through the unshuttered wondow and open door. Hair and head were unveiled, and he saw, despite being in her middle years, the faint lines of laughter fanning out from her eyes, on either side of the labile folds of her mouth, she was still a striking woman. In her youth, she must have been a great beauty; gracefully molded bone structure with features so even and fine, a sculptor would have paid half his life's earnings to capture her likeness in stone or clay. The dark fall of her hair, a chestnut brown, was gathered in a neat plate, scattered through with strands of grey, and as thick as a horses tail, hanging down her back. It's color made for stunning contrast to her eyes. Her skin was tanned in the way of persons who spent a great deal of their lives out in the sun.

He could feel the strength of her hands as she completed her task, placing his old bandages on the table. They were hands indicative of years of hard labor, but her Latin, as had been the case with her daughter the evening before, was spoken with the articulation of the literate, accented with the lilting quality of the northern isles. The poultice stung astringently in his wounds, cautioning him to move slowly as he leaned back once more.

She found her own seat again, sitting back to watch him with expectant regard. "Was it good," she asked before long.

"What, the food," he replied. She nodded. He affirmed with a short, "Yes, actually it was. It's your sleeping potions I've learned to be leery of."

"You didn't sleep well then," she inquired with her precise speech. She was clothed in a country dress of softened wool, undyed and sleeveless for the heat of summer, tied at the waste with a cinch of cloth. The garb of peasant folk, again at odds with her Latin.

"I think I slept a little too deeply. My dreams were not good ones, " he admitted.

She nodded again, in a knowing way. "That was not my potion, Spaniard," she explained with a trace of amusement. "that was your spirit wandering far afield. The dead, it seems, won't leave you alone just yet, will they?"

He struggled to mask his surprise at how she'd deciphered his dream when he hadn't even mentioned it, thinking ruefully, neither will the living.

"It is a gift, you know—not uncommon to those who have walked the lands of the dead and returned," she explained.

Balefully, he said, "If it's a gift, I've no wish for it."

That cracked her implacable demeanor, which until then had been one of patient indulgence. Not, as he might have expected—coming in the way of an angered rebuttal to his comment--but with laughter, pure, honest laughter.

In the same way he'd made Nemhyn self-concsious, catching her off-guard the night before with his won brief mirth at her expense, he suddenly felt discomfited by the woman's humor. "How like a Roman," she said, still chortling, "to think he can command the will of the Fates. It's obvious the mien of a slave did not come easily to you."

"What is it you want with me," he demanded then, the force of his words quieting her merriment. He was almost sorry he'd interrupted her amusement because the way she looked at him now, with an expression of solemn consideration, disturbingly mirrored the gaze of the god reflected in the eyes of Marcus Aurelius.

"The question you ought to be asking, Maximus," she addressed him, "is what you want of living."

"To be left alone after I heal. To live out the rest of my life as far away from the shadow of Rome as is humanly possible, and not be bothered by her incessant intrigues."

Maeve didn't recoil from his words. In fact, as far as he could tell, she didn't seem the least affected by his strong assertion, simply folding her hands in her lap in a composed gesture, watching him with faint amusement, the pale orbs of her eyes fathomless. "Well, well. How readily you forsake Her when you were ready to die for Her but a week ago."

He had no idea why he said what come out of his mouth next. "Lucius is dead, did you know that?" Perhaps it was to throw her off, break through her impenetrable calm.

Once more, he was sorely disappointed by her reaction when she only shrugged, replying, "So I learned last night at the house of the farmer whose wife I was attending. And now the seat of Ceaser stands without a contested heir. Who do you think will have the courage to lay claim to the throne guarded so devotedly by the Praetorians?"

Scathingly, he replied, "You can thank Lucilla next time you see her that my concern for the future of Rome's Caesers ended with her unanticitpated support to her brother. In essence, I really don't care who stands next in the line of succession."

Leaning forward into the morning light filtering in washed-out rays from the window, the white of her hair catching the glinting brillence as her braid fell over her shoulder, Maeve's gaze seemed to harden at his words, ice-pale eyes growing cold. "A mother's love can transcend the principles of state and law, Maximus. Do not think to comdemn her for trying to defend the life of her son at the expense of your own. She now suffers as you have, losing those she loved the most, entrapped by the Guard, and in greater peril than you find yourself, presently. Even so," she continued in her frost riddled voice. "Even so, I suspect she will not forsake the Empire as you seem yourself to desire"

"So what would you have me do," he challenged, meeting her gaze for gaze with a look as flinty as her own. "Go to Rome and announce myself Caeser…the general who became a slave, the slave who became a gladiator, the gladiator who died slaying an emporer, resurrected as an emporer himself?" The words were self-mocking, but any reply Maeve might have made was interrupted by a sound from outside, the braying of a donkey, and the entrance of Nemyhn just as he'd finished speaking.

"If you do that, Spaniard, I can imagine fewer ways of making a stunning entrance to the Queen of Cities. You might wish for more than me and my mother, though, to act as your supporting legions. Two women and an ex-slave, even one who's meant to be dead, are probably not going to strike awe and terror into the hearts of Rome's urban cohorts when we march down the Triumphal Way." She stood for a moment, in the doorway, her face shadowed by the backlight and the depths of her shawl, but the laughter in her voice was evident, breaking the mounting tension rising between him and Maeve.

"Elephants," the older woman said inexplicably, her hard expression transmuting once more, into humorous appreciation.

"What," he blurted, with puzzled simplicity. This conversation had suddenly gone from the serious to the absurd, leaving him confused and frustrated.

"Elephants," she clarified, tongue-in-cheek. "If we had elephants as our mounts, we would probably make a more astounding entrance." The look he gave was priceless, a mixture of non-plussed aggravation competing with the ghost of a smirk he couldn't quite keep from his face as the image filled his mind.

"But no," she picked up where their conversation left off, "to set your mind at ease, I'm not asking you to claim the seat of Ceaser. There will be more than enough contenders," she said, a fleeting expression of dread crossing her face, replaced in the blink of an eye with her prior calm, "for that valued position in the months to come. I only ask that you accompany my daughter and I back to Britannia."

About to reply, his response was precluded by Maeve's daughter who had moved, during this time, from the entrance to sit at the feet of her mother, arranging herself comfortably on the floor. She'd removed her cowl, and the sight greeting his eyes temporarily forestalled further thoughts. He only realized, he must indeed have been in some pain and misery last night not to have been aware of what he was now.

Raised to a soldier's rough life, and the rigid practicalieties of campaigning, one would have thought such sensitivities not cultivated in a man of his outward nature. He had always had an artists eye though, and an inclination to appreciate things of beauty—whether a transient sunset, a gracefully structured edifice, or…a lovely woman. And Nemyhn, as her mother must have been in her youth, was one of the lovliest had had ever seen.

Her features, if less finely molded than her mother's, were nigh as regular, and perhaps, more pronounced—fuller of lip, eyes broader set in a higher brow, a nose that boasted a slight arch, detracting not at all from the fine harmony of sculpted cheek-bones and pale skin, etched with a light scattering of freckles. She wasn't embarrassed by his momentary bemusement, staring back at him with eyes a pleasing shade of green-flecked hazel, reflecting a spirit of intelligence and humor. The motion of her hand as she tried to place stubborn curls of red-gold back into the coil at her nape, was one of unconscious practicality rather than vanity.

"Were you going to say something, Spaniard," she asked, a faint smile upon her lips.

He shook his head to clear it of the momentary distraction, shifting uncomfortably in the cot as he his eyes slid back to Maeve, not responding directly to her daughter. "For what?" He was forming a distinct impression that he was about to be manuevored in a way he couldn't quite decipher, and not adequately prepare for.

To his annoyance, she didn't answer his question, but addressed her daughter instead. "Nemhyn, was there news from Rome when you were at the market this morning?"

He heard an odd tone of strained enunciation as Maeve's daughter replied, looking to her mother and avoiding his gaze, "There was gossip at the baker's stall that Commodus' sister has been force into banishment on Capri, and the prefect who conspired to kill Commodus has declared Helvius Pertinax Caeser."

Before he know what he asked, the words were out of his mouth. "What of Senator Gracchus?"

That drew her attention back to him, briefly "There was nothing mentioned of the Senator." So saying, she paid him no more heed, turning back to Maeve, whose eyes were once more pools of ice. "Mother, what of Pertinax. What are we-

With a gesture, Maeve quieted her daughter's concern, letting the full weight of her indecipherable stare fall upon him. "So Spaniard, what do you say to events transpiring in Rome. Have you a care?" There was a chilly mockery behind those words.

"Absolutely none," he answered with a frigidity to his own words and gaze, moving his injured shoulder carefully about, testing the range of its limited motion.

"So, if you feel there is nothing left for you here, would you consider, perhaps, trying your luck abroad."

Never wavering from her look, her offered deliberately, "In Britannia, you mean."

Maeve's gaze didn't lose its chill, but a smile played across her lips, short-lived. "Where better? We were planning on departing today in any case—two women traveling alone could use a male companion to ensure their safety."

With spiteful incredulity, he laughed shortly. "Please, do you really think me so gullible. I haven't an idea who you or your daughter are, but something tells me you're more than the wandering herb-dealers you proclaim."

"Healers," Nemhyn interjected stiffly. The look he gave was not nearly as appraising as his earlier one had been, before turning back to Maeve.

"I've apparently been at death's door this last week, fighting off a fever only last night, and suddenly you expect me to be your protector for the while your on the road?"

"You'll find your injuries much improved today, I think," Maeve pointed out, watching as he sat up fully in the cot to swing his legs over the side. The bindings on his left inhibited movement some, and the vertigo he experienced was passing. But she was right, the pain of his wounds, while still present, did not hinder his breathing to the degree it had last night, though there was a lingering weakness, he suspected, from the fever—an unsteadiness that, as he stood, made him sit back down, promptly.

"That doesn't mean, of course, we're leaving right this minute," the older woman remonstrated, her voice tinged with humor once more, tracking his second attempt to stand with a careful gaze. Her daughter was doing the same—ready to move to his side in case he lost balance. "Or that we even expect you to stand in as our protector. It will take at least a month before you've fully regained your strength, and we'll hold to a slower pace for a time."

"You're rather quick to presume on my cooperation, given that I've not agreed to your offer," he responded flatly, giving her a look of contempt as he walked tentatively around the small hovel. He noted, in passing, his only other covering, besides his bandages, was a basic loincloth, covering him from waste to knee. Modest given the circumstances.

"You refuse us, then?" The older woman's expression was unreadable.

"Until you tell me why you and your daughter are so concerned about Helvious Pertinax taking the throne of Caeser, I'll not be accompanying you anywhere." Spoken with adamant finality.

He heard Nemhyn expulse an exasperated breath, rolling her eyes, saying nothing. She didn't need to, the gesture alone spoke volumes.

Maeve, in contrast, never altered her relaxed posture in the chair, arms still folded in a position of infinite patience. Her expression grew more intent, though, all at once searching and weighing him, digging to the bottom of his soul. He paused in his careful progress around the small hut, coming to lean against the table. She sighed once with a decisive sound. "If you accompany us at least to Genova, I will tell you of myself and my daughter along the way."

He'd moved back over to the wood-framed cot, sitting down without undue difficulty, attentive to his injured side. He may not have had the inclinations of a politician, but he knew when he was being put off trom his main objective. A feeling of frustration welled up again, making him think they would be on the isle by the time he discovered anything relevant. "Now is as good a time as any to say what you need to, " he said.

Maeve's look was one of staid patience. "I can tell you that we aren't simple peasant women traveling at our leizure across the vast expanses of the Empire. Would that satisfy you until we are on the road?"

He'd figured as much already, but he didn't say anything, remaining silent for some minutes, giving each of the women a dour look of resentment. He knew Maeve's words were the closest he would come to an explanation for now. Both women held his gaze steadily, the mother with her fathomless eyes, her daughter at her feet, the red-gold of her hair catching the morning sunlight from outside like newly burnished bronze. Until Nemhyn, with no trace of her mother's unflagging patience, said in a tone of frustration, "For gods' sake, Spaniard, don't be fool. You may be walking today, but you won't have full use of your arm for at least a month. You're as much at the mercy of wandering vagabonds or highway gangs as I or my mother would be if we chose to travel alone. Even an ox has sense enough to let people aid it when it's fallen into a hard way."

She had a point which he wasn't about to admit openly. "Don't think to bully me into this as you did with that sleeping potion last night, " he said threateningly. He noticed Maeve's eyebrows go up, with a questioning look at her daughter. Nemhyn blushed, and bit back the retort which was sure to come to her lips.

Her mother didn't pursue the subject, cutting their discussion short, probably sensing her daughter's words hit with acute persuasion. "The time grows late to depart, Maximus, and I will not press you further. We must get the rest of our supplies readied and loaded."

She moved to the door, pausing before leaving. "Whether you accompany us or no, I'm sure you'll wish to wash up. There is a basin outside with water and softened lye soap. My daughter can give you a fresh tunic and scissors if you also wish to groom yourself."

Nemhyn, who'd stepped past her mother, came back in with a clean garment, cut to the simple pattern of rural folk. In essence, a shorter version of the full-length, colorless wool composing the women's own apparel. He wondered, inconsequentially, what they'd done with his bloodied gladiator garb.

"Thank you," he managed to say. Maeve nodded before turning to leave him with her daughter, who gripped his good arm to balance him as the world swayed somewhat upon his standing.

"Why do you have such little love for Pertinax," he asked, as they stooped under the doorframe.

She ignored him initially, reaching for a stick of knarled wood leaning against the overhang posts. It was t-shaped at one end for support. "Here, use this, it will help you balance better."

"I'm not an invalid," he bit out, taking it from her despite his contrary words, shying form the brightness of the sunlight.

"No more than my mother and I wish you ill," she said with a pointed look. Balanced on the crutch , he did walk with greater ease, following her to a basin placed on an ancient tree-stump serving as a make-shift bench.

He noted his surroundings briefly, taking in the small hut built of mud wattle and tree limbs, and a thatched hay roof. Surrounding it was a gently sloping glade, with groves of ash and elm going up a slight incline, that itself, descended in the other direction into a marshland of reeds and cattails swaying in a light breeze that brought the faint odor of swamp to his nostrils. He could hear Maeve moving about on the other side of the hut, preparing the wagon and tacking the donkey for travel.

Nemhyn's next words broke into his scrutiny of the sylvan setting. "I'm not sure how much affairs of the island reach the mainland here, but the peace of the tribes abroad has been tenuous at best these last few years." She helped place the crutch against the side of the tree-stump, indicating the soap and scissors, placing the fresh tunic away from the basin of water.

He looked at the utensils with a quick glance, listening to what she had to say.

"The governors and legates appointed during Commodus' rule have been largely ineffectual at quelling discontent amongst their own troops. Pertinax, unfortuaneately, was one of those governors who exacted extreme discipline in his own legions, so much so that the infantry cohorts and auxilia under his command mutinied, killing his amici, and mistakenly taking him for dead as well. When Pertinax later discovered who fomented the treason, his vengence on troops, both numeri and auxilia alike, was such that he was forced to resign his position. Commodus offered him the prefecture in Rome as compensation."

Her features were troubled as she explained, "So, the name of Helvius Pertinax being haeralded as the next Caeser will bring little joy to most of the island's citizens—native and Roman alike. That is why I spoke his name with such little exultation."

His resentment forgotten for the moment, he nodded as another though occurred to him. "When legions are discontent under the rule of their provincial leaders and generals, there is less chance they will be able to adequately defend the peace that has existed under more competent officers."

"And that," Nemhyn confirmed, "is what has mother so troubled."

He knew something of serving under the banner of Rome, stationed in the far hinterlands, removed from a city spoken like a mythical god upon the tongues of common soldiers. That the respect and obligation binding troops to their commanders, and the commanders to the imperial house, was often a precarious unity at best. Rome, personified in the caricature of a weak emporer like Commodus, or an obsessively controlling man as Pertinax was reputed to be, introduced a fatal flaw in the chain of loyalities upon which the military opeated, making duty to Rome count for little if there was not a leader to personifty Her.

"What is it your mother has seen for the fate of Rome," he asked Nemhyn.

About to reply, Nemhyn's answer was cut short as they each turned in startlement to the sound of her mother's voice, for Maeve had just joined them at this juncture of their conversation. "Whatever scenes disturbed your sleep last night, Spaniard. That is what I have witnessed in my own visions for Roma Mater and Her people in the years to come." He saw, once more, the dread come across her face, reflected in her eyes and voice, before she buried in beneath her surface calm, saying to Nemhyn, "Come daughter, I need your help with the donkey's harness."

The younger woman nodded, looking to him. "You have everything you require for the moment."

He inclined his head in answer, watching her walk to the otherside of the hut, her mother about to follow, leaving him his privacy to bath. He stopped her on impulse with a rough jerk of her arm, and she turned back to him, expectant interest across her features. "Marcus Aurelius charged me with salvaging what was left of the ideals of Rome. That was also a part of my dream." He didn't want to tell her about the god, but her next words revealed she already knew.

"Not just the emporer, I think. It seems you've garnered the attention of the Shining Ones as well, Spaniard." His eyes flashed at that.

"Don't take it overly serious," she reassured. "You'll find The Wanderer a fickle companion, Maximus. His interest is not in you personally, but of the world in its entirety. The gods draw life from the actions of men, and he is one who has ever thrived on the changing dynamics of Middle Earth. These are uncertain times, and unfolding events capture his curiosity." She added with understanding, "Their presence can be uncomfortable though, no?"

"Whatever my place is in all of this, I already told you I am finished serving Rome," he insisted with a blazing look, the feeling of unnamed events spinning beyond his control, sweeping him up in their wake, making grip her arm tighter.

Maeve gently removed his hand. "That, I suppose, is your choice Spaniard. You are a freeman again, and it is up to your own conscience to do as you will with your life. If you chose to join me and my daughter to chance the shores of Britannia, I will warn you now, this is not the last you will hear of Rome and Her dream."

"Why should you are so much," he snorted derisively.

Her look was one of infinite tolerance as she spoke in tones of subtle intensity. "Rome's peace is something I would think all Her citizens value. Our lives—our very livlihoods—depend on it. As I said Maximus, it is for your own counsel to decide if you will find some way in which to preserve Her ideals, or to let Her crumble slowly, waiting for the dust to settle before you chose to step over the pieces She once was." With that she turned to go help her daughter, leaving him to contemplate her words. The sense of desolation he'd woken to earlier that morning washed over him, thinking of Lucius dead, the seat of Caeser controlled by the will of the Guard, and Rome but a plain of ashes trampled by the barbarian hordes.

An hour later, as the women climbed into the wagon, he approached the side, leaning on his crutch, walking with a noticeable limp, clothed in the fresh tunic, beard trimmed to its usual close shaven length, cleansed in body if not in spirit, smelling of pine scented lye-soap. The bandages and his injured side had hindered him some, but he'd managed sufficiently. The women had even given him a new pair of sandals, purchased by Nemhyn, as his tunic had been, that morning from the near-by market of Ravenna.

The donkey brayed in welcome, alerting the women to his advance, and he reached out to pet its velvety muzzle. It was near noon, and both women were cowled from the sun riding in the azure spring sky of Italy, shreds of feathery clouds overhead. He was loath to verbalize his acquiescence to their offer, and Maeve, perhaps picking up on his feeling, said it for him. "You've decided to accompany us."

He nodded shortly.

Nemhyn handed the reigns to Maeve, jumping down to rummage for something in the back of the wagon. "Climb on, Spaniard," she called back. He looked at her, frowning, when she returned with a hat, its brim broad and low hanging, such as the type shepards wore as they tended their flocks in the day.

Taking it from her, he asked, "Am I supposed to wear this?"

Nemhyn explained hesitantly, looking to Maeve. "You probably won't be recognized by most of the commoners we pass, but-

"But," Maeve filled in for her daughter, "there are always cohorts moving about on the roads we will travel, and while it is unlikely any will know you for who you indeed are, Maximus-

She broke off, letting him finish. "There is definitely more of a chance my face will be identified. I see your point," he said, surprisingly amenable, seating himself next to Maeve. "Are you riding in back," he asked Nemhyn.

Shaking her head, Maeve's daughter answered, "No, I'll walk up by Hercules for a time. He needs more prodding to make him pull the load of a wagon after he's had a week of no work."

For a moment, his sullen expression lifted in poorly disguised bafflement. "Hercules? You've named a donkey Hercules?"

He heard Maeve beginning to chuckle as her daughter explained with an effort to keep her own face straight, "We had to think of something heroic to make up for the fact he's gelded. Otherwise he may not haul our wagon so unfailingly without complaint." She gave him a meaningful look before walking up to take the donkey by its halter. "Persuasion is so much more effective than force, don't you think?"

Maeve twitched the reigns once, and the wagon lurched forward to head up a trail winding through the groves of trees in the clearing, merging with a wider path that led out to a humble spread of houses consisting of thatched roofs and wooden frames.

"You would know," he vociferated loudly enough for her to hear over the wagons creaking wheels. "You're the one who got me take that medicine last night. Was that persuasion or force?"

The words were not said without an indication of wry amusement, and while she didn't not look back at him from her place at the donkey's—Hercules'—side, her could hear her laugh at his comment, light, like the brisk breeze blowing at the whim of the Italian spring.

Against his will, a smile softened the grimness of his own countenance. If not soothing his inner turmoil, it did help to raise his spirits, if only for a moment, as they passed through the village's small square, where women were filling their clay jugs with watar from the well, and the smithy was busy pounding away at newly formed iron trappings for a farmers plow. The inhabitants paid little attention to the small group as they made their way out of the village proximity, for they afforded no more interest than any other peasants on their way to market in Ravenna; one man with a crutch placed over his lap, features concealed by a shepard's hat, the two women, one seated next to him, the other afoot, both with shawls pulled up to shield their skin from the Italian sun and their faces from public view.

Chapter 4

All right, about time I add a disclaimer to this...all things Dreamworks...except my own characters, those mentioned in this first book and those others still to come as the story progresses...and by this point, if you don't know who's who, then I think you need to see the movie again (that doesn't exactly sound like such a bad idea actually;)

Also, a few things to explain that I probably should have put into the first chapter, but here it is now. I will say this now, for all the history buffs, and for those who aren't: THE HISTORICAL OUTLINE OF THIS STORY IS SCHIZOID. Meaning, some of the events that happened between 180-185CE, I've combined with those occurring after Commodus' death in 192CE. This is not excessively apparent in this first book, but will become more so as events unfold in the second book. Frankly, I figure if Hollywood can mess with history, so can I.

In addition, I feel I should apologize for the lack of any major action in this first story. Redemption was meant more as a character study of a man who became disillusioned by the world he was living in, and must find some new purpose/direction with his life. Promise, there will be more war, grandeur, etc. , etc. (just hope I can deliver), with the next book.

One more point, then I'll stop babbling. The historical period, and events surrounding it, are as interesting, if not more so, than any fiction/fanfic that I could ever hope to write. It's never actually mentioned in the movie how much time passes between when Maximus is made a slave, and when he kills Commodus. In truth, 12 years actually elapses, but that's a little too long for the purpose of what I'm writing, so I've narrowed down to about 2 years...i.e., instead of 192, I've made it 182. At about that time, chronologically speaking, somewhere between 183-185, Britain was experiencing some heavy assaults from tribes north of Hadrian's Wall (which will be mentioned in this Chapter 4), as well as discontent amongst the legions stationed on the island. Speed forward to 192, after the death of Commodus, and we see an empire thrown into the midst of civil war with 3 factions all vying for the throne of Caeser (Septimius, Albinus, and Niger). Albinus governed Britannia at this time. His legions, those on the island, were in favor of his desire to claim the throne. Hence, my schizoid history...the events of these two time periods in factual history provided such "juicy" (excuse the tacky term) events for a story, inspired by the character of Maximus, that I'm here now, trying to take advantage of my spring break to finish some uh, needed research before I have to get back to my studies;)

So read on if you dare and enjoy the angst...I promise, the guy won't stay this bitter always;)

Oh yeah, place names: Tarraco is in Spain, nowadays known as Tarragona; Isirium Brigantium is actually known as Aldersborough which is close to York in the UK, and Eboracum actually is York. Also, thanks to one of the very informative, and much appreciated reviewer's comments, the Latin name for Genova was actually Ianua.

O-kay, now here it is:

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Chapter 4

The rest of the journey to Genova was marked by points of contention, often resulting in Maximus' temper erupting in lew of Maeve's judicious discussions of Rome and Her presence in the lives of the citizenry. It was obvious he did not want to hear the things Maeve had to say, especially regarding the empire he had once served with his life, nor about the emperor whom he had sworn his loyalty to, even after his death. There was a day, a week, or so into their overland journey to Genova, where they would catch sail to Tarraco before they headed north, when Maeve and Maximus came to heads once again. Nemyhn made a valiant effort to hold her tongue during such exchanges, commonplace as they had become, letting her mother's words soothe the man's agitation with her sibilant voice washing over him like cool water upon a febrile brow.

It was still early morning, and there were few farm-hands in the expanses of grain fields, or in the orchards of orange and pear trees they passed. The sunlight from the east filtered down in rays spliced by the branches of maples lining the road, their limbs tethered with tapers of colorful cloth—the signs of some recent bucolic festivity.

He asked on seeming impulse, "That village where we stayed at was inhabited by Christians, wasn't it."

Nemhyn, as usual, was reluctantly amazed by his powers of observation, listening with interest from where she walked by the donkey, as to how her mother responded.

"You saw what they did to the sculpture of the river god over their well," Maeve inquired, unsuprised.

"You mean the fish they carved upon it," he replied. Nemyhn knew a great many Christians were killed in the arena, and she supposed he had probably encountered them often enough, though they were usually saved for the beasts, and not the gladiators themselves.

Maeve was studying him with her astute gaze, and Nemhyn heard her mother say, "Rome is a very old empire, tolerant to an extent, but extremely set in Her ways. She has little respect for those who find another god to worship in Her place, frightened She will be displaced by a rival loyalty."

With a significant glance, she added before facing forward, "Even your exulted emperor, Marcus Aurelius had no love for the followers of the Cristos."

"If he didn't," Maximus remonstrated, "it was because they contributed to a world all ready brimming with dis-unity. One he was trying to guard against invasion."

"Yet," the older woman disputed," others see them as a symbol of martyrdom, resisting the yoke of imperial chains placed around their necks. They will bear their crosses, and proclaim their God above all others, even under the wings of the Eagle."

"Then its fortunate for them the glory of Rome died with Marcus Aurelius," he said caustically, before adding, "Whatever his policies were to a bunch of mid-guided hermits form the east, Lady, I won't hear you insulting the name of the one man who's memory I still hold in good faith. I loved him as a father, and as an emperor, he was above comparison."

The topped a slight rise in the road, and her mother's response was belied by the appearance of troops marching from the opposite direction, in formation, the hobnails on the soles of their sandals clanking with each pace in a disquieting unison of metallic clangor. Hercules shied at the cacophony of noise and Maeve, with Nemhyn's lead at the beasts halter, guided the wagon off the road, under a canopy of blossoming crab-apple trees.

The soldiers paid them little attention, but she noticed Maximus pull his hat somewhat lower over his head as she and her mother hugged their shawls tighter about themselves. Nemhyn recognized the standards of individual cohorts from throughout the Empire, though none, thankfully, from Britannia.

When the last rank of troops passed, sometime later, their reverberating rhythm echoing in the distance, the small trio headed back out onto the road.

Maeve spoke into the suddenly resounding silence, her voice low but carrying. "I don't say this to belittle the man you honored and loved, nor to deny his accomplishments as a ruler of nations, Maximus. I say this because all men contain varying amounts of darkness and light in their souls and there is always more than one way of looking at a truth, even regarding the actions of a man like Marcus Aurelius."

He said nothing to her, staring furiously into the western horizon as they passed under boughs of another orchard, this time of apple trees, only beginning to blossom. A flock of finches was startled form where they had been picking for seeds amongst the crevices of the stone-laced road, seeking refuge in the branches over-head, their feathers flashing yellow. Nemhyn reached up to grasp at a fragrant blossom, her motion disturbing the tree limbs and releasing a rain of petals under which the small group made their way. Maeve watched the cascade of flowers as Maximus reached out distractedly, with his uninjured arm to catch some of the white blossoms in his hand, crushing them to breath their sweet scent before letting them fall.

"Fear not, Maximus," Nemhyn heard her mother say. "The histories will remember your emperor as a ruler of fair mind and temperate judgment, and indeed, he was better than many who came before him. But history is often written by those in power, and has a tendency to forget the nameless, voiceless masses it wishes to silence for the glory of those it chooses to praise."

Nemhyn did have to credit him for knowing how to place words meant to affront. "If you're not a Christian, then I don't believe you have anything to fear," he said in a low, stinging tone.

Typical of her mother though, Maeve gave him a profoundly amused look, ignoring the implied umbrage behind his words. "One has only to read the dialogues of Julius Caeser or Tacitus to remember how history already views my people, Spaniard.

"Nearly a century and a half ago, when Rome first invaded our shores, Her citizens still considered my people little more than barbarians. And perhaps it was true," she said with a faint smile, "for our world, according to Roman law, had no order to it—we rallied armies on a whim for no better reason than to raid another tribe's pastures. If sickness or famine broke out, we did not hide in temples and make supplications to our gods, but danced in defiance of death—our eulogy to the temerity of life.

"We were something the Romans did not understand, wild and untamed as we were," a curious yearning had come into her voice, disappearing with the inevitable fall of her next words. "They never anticipated the island's people had no wish to be part of Her Empire.

"But the lure of Britannia's mines, her wool, her fertile lands were too strong for Rome to ignore, and she invaded with her armies, establishing her garrisons to quell any further revolts after the Iceni uprising, laying down Roman dictate and seducing my people with Roman wealth, and Roman luxuries—silks, wines, and entertainments."

Maximus, who had been staring obstinately ahead until now, broke in, giving Nemyhn's mother a resentful look. "What about Her peace and Her prosperity? Your island hasn't seemed so resistant to that."

Her gentle laugh, once again diffused the slight his words intended. With an ironic glance, she said, "Now you see, Spaniard. Two sides to every truth. Rome's ideals of unity under one name have prospered for the most part upon the island's soil. We have come to appreciate the amenities of civilized life—Her bathhouses, Her cities, Her learning.

"But," she stressed, "Rome never thought to examine the gifts my people might have given Her. You Romans call yourselves enlightened, yet never did my people deny any person—man, woman, slave, or free-laborer—the dignity of their humanity, nor the right to justice guarded by laws meant to protect that dignity.

"In Rome, when a woman becomes a widow, her property reverts back to her closest male relative; when a slave's master is judged guilty of a crime, the slave himself is tortured, for he has no rights separate of the one who owned him."

Nemhyn glanced back to see Maximus give her mother a hard look at the mention of slavery, as Maeve concluded. "Such laws did not exist amongst my people before Rome invaded, Spaniard, but to survive, we have learned to incorporate the dictates of Roma Mater alongside those of the older brehon beliefs. Romes' light shines far, but She must learn to temper Her flame so that Her various people's light may shine with Her.

"So you see Maximus," she finished with a simple nod, turning back to the horizon, " there is always more than side to any truth."

He punctuated her statement with a sarcastic, "And more than one truth to every tale. What, I wonder, is the truth behind your own tale, Lady?"

Her mother smiled enigmatically, catching his implication. "Later, Spaniard. My promise was not an empty one, and we have time enough to tell it."

"Is there a reason why now isn't a good time," he asked with a tinge of annoyance.

Maeve simply shook her head in patient humor, but her daughter looked back at him, scowling. "Stop the wagon Mother," she commanded.

With a puzzled look, Maeve pulled back on the donkey's reigns, and Nemyhn approached the side where Maximus was seated. "If you're going to be impertinent, Spaniard, you can walk up by Hercules for a while. I'm tiring, and you're not as dependent on your crutch anymore. Your leg could use the exercise, and Hercules a slower pace."

The look her gave her would have made stone tremble, but he made no protest as he climbed down.

"Consider it male-bonding," she said. "He spends the majority of his time in the company of women. It's good for him to have a man walking beside him now and then."

Nemyhn settled herself next to her mother, and Maeve snapped the reigns once, signaling faithful Hercules to carry on.

Maximus, walking where Nemhyn had been, muttered deprecatingly, "You know you've come upon sorry straits when your sole source of male camaraderie is a gelded beast."

She didn't know if he meant it in humor or not, but she found herself chuckling at his statement all the same, and wasn't too taken aback when he joined her moments later.

That humorous respite was an isolated occurrence, however, as they approached the walls of Genova along the western roads. Indeed, for a man whose physical injuries were knitting as cleanly as his were, his mood grew increasingly glum, at odds with the verdancy of the newly ripening fields they passed and the prolifically blossoming trees of the Italian spring. And, Nemhyn thought, a true contradiction to Hippocrates' theory that when the spirit suffers, so does the body.

Truth to tell, he was thriving in body, making no secret of his appreciation of the cooking she and her mother did when they camped along stream beds, or in sheltered gullies at night. It was, perhaps, the one thing from which he garnered any satisfaction. His brooding grew more frequent, and he would often curse the lot of them, her mother, for not yet revealing the full nature of their excursion to Rome, and herself…herself for being the only other available target for his anger whenever she changed his bandages in the morning, or insisted he still take the pain medication at the end of a long day's journeying.

Hence, she would try to stay out of his way, as much as possible in any case, in at attempt to avoid his glowering mood. Not because she was intimidated, though she could see how his strong passions—even his grief and sorrow, most certainly his rage, could put the fear of the gods into weaker souls. She avoided him because her own temper was such that she did not back down from confrontation, but rather, met it head on--a characteristic of her personality, she knew from past experience, that usually threatened to increase already bruised sensitivities.

Between his dour gloom and his rages, he would storm off, either into the night to find what solace he could by the rippling of a stream if they were camped, or to sit in lowering silence in the commons of a village inn if they passed through a town, mother and daughter offering their services as healers for food and lodging.

In truth, they were listening for information of Pertinax's rise to the throne, how he chose to initiate his reign occupying the highest seat in the world.

And what they heard, while promising superficially, did not translate well to the longevity of Pertinax's rulership. A group of officers from a road patrol in a wayside tavern one night, spoke of how the man who had once been governor of Britannia was endearing himself to the Senate, supporting policies meant to favor its members, while instituting disciplinary actions upon the Praetorian Guard such as they hadn't known since Marcus Aurelius.

"Not wise, " Maeve said with ill-concealed anxiety when they retired to their rooms later that night, leaving Maximus downstairs to do as he normally did. Not drowning himself in drink, but staring off into the emptiness he felt his world had become. "Necessary, but not wise, courting the favor of one governing body at the expense of the other," her mother repeated, unbraiding her hair for the evening. "He will not last long because of it."

Nemyhn said nothing, keeping her troubled thoughts to herself as she readied for bed. She didn't care about Pertinax, it was the fact that a good portion of the legions he had summoned to uphold his elevation to Caeser had come from Britannia—leaving the already vulnerable territories south of the Wall horribly exposed and critically under-manned.

The dreams she had that night were disturbing enough to keep her up late into the out-tide hours of earliest morning, when Maximus finally came to collapse upon his own pallet on the opposite side of the room.

This mood couldn't last. The tension had been growing like the proverbial weed between Maeve and Maximus, so much so, that the evening they came to stand outside of the walls of Genova, it finally erupted, with Maximus storming off, as usual, into the darkness of night, leaving her mother to stare at the flames of their camp fire, reaching with immense reserves of composure to not show how much she was shaken.

The had completed a hard days travel, traversing through copses of orange trees, passing between hills blanketed with lavender and violets, making their way to the coast carefully along a narrow ledge, over-hung by cypress trees and bordered by grape vines descending in steps to the rocky beach below. The gates of the city had already shut for the evening, with the watch patrolling along the bulwarks. Maeve decided to await morning before entering , and they found a near-bye knoll bordering a stream, edged with marsh lilies and nettles, lined with oak trees whose branches extended over the small water-way.

Maximus gathered the firewood and helped set out the food, a simple fare of left-over bread, a wedge of peculiar cheese stuffed with berries that gave it a tart flavor. She and her mother prepared a soup using dried meat, supplemented with wild leeks and other herbs collected from their immediate area.

He could move now, with almost no inhibition from his injuries, his sword wounds, even the deepest mostly scabs. His injured arm, though it showed a furious mottled bruise from shoulder to elbow, he almost had complete use of.

They had been eating in silence, both women with mantles drawn back, he without his customary shepard's hat, enjoying the balmy coolness of the evening. He sat across from them on the other side of the fire, hunched over his food, chewing with methodical action. Her mother was staring absently into the flames, lost in her own thoughts.

He was the first to break the quiet, his voice addressing her mother, startling Nemhyn out of her own internal reverie for his attention had seemed focused inward. "Well Maeve, you can prostelatize about every virtue of Rome while on the road. Yet, here we stand outside of Genova, and I know nothing more about you and your daughter—if she is indeed your daughter—than I did two weeks ago."

Maeve, her ice-pale eyes cast to an eerie reddish light from the flames, her braid melting to shadow in the surrounding darkness, was as still as a carved statue, considering his words in silence. When she finally did speak, she let the words fall from her mouth like dead weights, their effect upon the man visible even beyond the glow of the fire, as he struggled to cope with their implications.

"Commodus's rule wrecked havoc along the northern border of my homeland. Only by the hand of my husband and the devotion of my eldest son, has Rome managed to fend off the worst of the assaults from the northern tribes across the Wall of Hadrian. Still, precious territory has been lost, and the legions, what's left of them, have been forced to fall back as the tribes lay waste to lands once held under the banner of the Eagle."

"And who, Lady, is your husband," he asked with menacing undertone.

Nemhyn held still, her food half chewed, the rising friction between her mother and the man palpable. They had locked gazes, her fathomless depths reflecting his simmering fury.

"Marcus Antius Crescens Calpurnianus, leader of the garrison troops along the Wall of Hadrian, and-

"-and general of the VI Victrix stationed at Eboracum," he finished for her with cutting inflection. "Has the situation grown so bad in Britannia that he now relies on his wife for the recruiting. Is that what you had in mind for me, woman, because if so, I warn you to reconsider your plans. I won't be used as a means to someone else's ends again!"

Maeve was unaffected by his threatening exclamation, saying, "Rome is coming upon a time when those powers that hold Her together will begin to rip Her apart at Her seams, and more precious cohorts will be called away from the Wall to serve the personal interests of men who seek the throne of Caesar. You are hardly a means to any end I have, Maximus. I simply wished to offer you some direction before the tidal wave of war crashes upon us all."

His voice was almost frantic with self-deprecation, as he said scathingly, "Doing what, Lady? Taking up the sword and shield once more, the man who was the general of the Felix legions, brought back from the dead to fight for…for what…the Empire, your husband...against the northern tribes?"

"There are worse tinges for which to aspire, Maximus. Less worthy ways a man might lead a life than in defense of that which he loves."

Emotions chased across his face, a mirage of open resentment at her words, anger and grief at the way they laid bare the pain of his soul. Tight and gruff, he said, "I commanded men once in service to an Emperor I would gladly have given my life for, only to stand helpless as his son destroyed my home, my family…and my belief in a dream that was once Rome."

The desolation of those words made Nemhyn cringe, and she suppressed the involuntary shudder running down her spine. She was expecting a sharp rejoinder from her mother, was surprised when instead, a gradual compassion came over the older woman's face, as Maeve responded softly, "They were never buried, were they Maximus?"

He whinced at that, unable to hold her gaze longer, turning away , his face hidden by the shadow of evening and firelight. His voice though, when he answered, was cold enough to stop the wind in its tracks. "I tried to cut them down from where they'd been left to hand after being scorched to death, but I couldn't reach them. I think I passed out…from exhaustion maybe. I don't remember."

"When we reach Tarraco, we will head west to Trujillo, instead of north," Maeve said in tones of condolence.

"Why?" One word, spoken in simple anguish as he looked back at the older woman, drawn to her gaze once more.

"Because Maximus, you must lay the spirits of your dead to rest before you allow yourself to move on." Despite its gentleness, there was an unyielding iron behind Maeve's words.

It must have been too much for him by then, for he got to his feet as smoothly as he could, given the stiffness of healing injuries, ready to disappear into the night.

Before he could make his retreat, Maeve called out to him, "You are still bound with us to the shores of Britannia, Spaniard. If for no other reason than you owe me the favor of my having told you of our identity." Nemhyn could see her mother hated forcing that knowledge on him.

He stepped back into the firelight. "To the shores of Britannia, then." There was exhausted resignation in his voice, but his eyes glinted like hard flint at his next words. "I will not take up arms again in the name of Rome, nor lead men under the banner of the Eagle. When we reach Londinium, I go my own way, to live my own life." With that he turned, his retreating figure absorbed into the darkness as he stalked off toward the stream.

Nemhyn, too, stood-up, gathering their food-stuffs and cleaning the bowls they'd used before re-packing them. Her mother kept staring into the flames, the Pythia upon her stool watching the revelations of the future unfold. "If it were up to me, Spaniard, you would be allowed to live your life as you choose," she heard her mother whisper into the flickering light. "But you, unfortunately, have been branded by the gods for other things. You can not escape the weaving of fate, nor be other than what you are, and that is a leader of men."

Nemhyn found him sitting beside the bank, underneath a massive old oak tree later that night, its trunk thickened and knarled by the years, its leaves silver in the light of the moon, its image reflected by the ribbon of dark waters over which its branches reached up and out to the sky. She didn't really know what compulsion bade her seek him out, and she hesitated, debating with herself if it was a good idea at all to approach him. Her words, if she had anything to say to him, were hardly to be inspiring, and she hadn't her mother's knack for patient guidance.

He ignored her, purposely she supposed, looking out into the murky waters, legs extended in front of himself, arms clasped over his chest. He was still fastidious about his beard, trimming it closely every other day, shaving when he could, though his hair was beginning to grow out, curling over his ears and down his neck.

Despite the feeling of intrusion, akin to the way she felt that first night he'd awakened, she cut her inward deliberation short, plopping herself down next to him without invite, dropping the ointment jar she had been holding into his lap.

He was, apparently, not as unacknowledging of her presence as she'd presumed, for he caught the jar with a deft motion of his hand. On his injured side, she noted, the movement causing him no apparent discomfort.

"You're able to put the salve on yourself now. You might as well use the last of it." She failed to keep the acidity out of her voice.

He fingered the jar carelessly. "Your mother is a very persistent woman. Do you suppose she ever grows frustrated because I'm not compliant to her counsel, as yet?"

She shrugged, arranging her skirt more comfortably as she encircled her arms about her knees, gazing off at the shadowy outline of trees on the otherside of the bank. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked. "I expect you'll be doubly resistant now that you know who we are," she admonished.

He didn't agree or disagree, studying her with a gadging look that annoyed her. "The daughter of Antius Crescens. So, where do you fit into all of this. Do you always agree with the direction your mother takes?"

She found herself scowling, wondering about his sudden curiosity. "Mother is the seeress, I'm not. But no, I don't always agree with her. Case in point, the night Lucilla summoned us to examine you, I argued rather vehemently against even meeting with her. It was a dangerous exposure of ourselves if we had been caught, given who my mother and I are, and what Lucilla was embroiled in—plotting against her brother."

He snickered at that, picking up a pebble and tossing it into the stream, the sound making a dull plunk.

"Besides, " she added, "I figured it was a waste of our time better served elsewhere. You were most likely dead."

"I was dead," he insisted. "You should have let me be."

She shook her head, feeling the characteristic impatience that arose, having contended this point one too many times in the last few weeks. "You were in shock. Your body lost a lot of blood, Spaniard. This is old ground and I won't go over it again."

He laughed at that, an embittered sound, gazing back out across the water with a bleak expression. "I'm still not entirely sure I believe you. Two women, one the wife of a senior officer and the other his daughter, traveling as witch-healers to the poor. Tell me why I ought to trust you, if you're traveling under such a guise?"

Once more, he seemed to know the words that could ignite her temper, and it was an effort to over-look the implied insult. "You know better than to call us witch-healers," she castigated him harshly. "The way your injuries have mended speaks to that. Regardless if one has had formal training with the Greek and Roman medical texts, unless you graduate from Alexandria and are male, physician is a title denied women.

"In the eastern provinces, we might get away traveling as women from our own class. There, it is not unusual for upper-class women to work as professionals of some skill, particularly in midwifery and gynecology. Here in the west though, we are relegated by that same position of privilege to traveling as you now see us—supposed peasant women dealing our folk remedies and our herbs…unless, of course, one takes notice as to the content of our treatments."

"And in your homeland," he asked.

"In Britannia, my mother and I are known," she offered as explanation. "That is our protection there."

He exhaled shortly, in a derisive fashion, saying, "I don't suppose Lucilla would have entrusted my life to women not of her class in any case."

"True enough," Nemhyn agreed. "Mother attended to the birth of Lucius nearly ten years ago, when Lucilla and her husband had come to the isle. "

She saw him look at her questioningly. "Verus and my father served on campaign years before, along the fronts of the eastern Danube."

Again, that same derisive breath, as he turned back to stare across the water. "Do you know, she betrayed me, if my figuring is correct, the night before you and your mother came." It could almost have been conversational, except for the scornful nuance behind his words.

She looked at him once, quickly, frowning, struggling for a response that would neither be hurtful nor insulting, unable to concieve of an appropriate reply, only thinking with an empty sadness, and now her son is as dead as yours.

He must have had the discerning power of the gods, for he caught her off-guard. "I know what you're thinking," he said quietly, without his usual embittered tone.

She made to answer then, but he cut her off with a shake of his head. "No, I'm not accusing you. I've thought it often myself these last weeks, and it makes me wonder what good, if any, my actions had at all. The man I was when I promised Marcus Aurelius I would safeguard the Republic is not the man who slew Commodus." Again, those tones of defeat and self-condemnation.

"Vengeance drove my action, but his daughter made me believe in something again—a dream she and her father had shared, a vision of Rome. That dream died when I figured out she'd betrayed me."

In carefully neutral tones, Nemyhn said softly, "She told an inspiring tale. One that's drawn men for centuries…the idea of Rome." It was a simple comment, one without pity and devoid of judgment. She saw, when he studied her, he acknowledged that with the light of unspoken gratitude in his eyes, before nodding once, and going on.

"I used to tell my men before going into battle that what we do in this life echoes in eternity. Now I find myself wondering if that's true, what purpose any of my actions served. Commodus is slain, but then so is Lucius, and as for my family—" He broke off, his throat working.

"As for your family," Nemhyn murmured, "we will see they have the last rites they never received."

"I don't know why I'm telling you this," he said in a strangled voice. "Perhaps I'm seeking absolution, but if that's the case, I know you're not the one to give it, Nemyhn." He was staring out again, across to the other side, seeking answers never to be found in the shadows of the trees.

Perhaps it was because of those words, she finally came upon what she had been meaning to say, though it hadn't occourred to her until now.

"Antoninus Pius and father had their differences of opinion in how to deal with the tribes across the Danube where my father served as a young man. Father felt they should be incorporated into the empire as feodorati, in service to the State, and eventually granted full citizenship. While Pius agreed, he thought the Empire not ready. Two enemies in the same borders, he said, meaning the politicians of Rome and the newly settled tribes, do not make for a stable peace.

"But the tribes kept growing more aggressive, and father persisted with his suggestion, which is why he ended up in Britannia," she said sardonically, "and Verus was kept on as leader of the Eastern legates.

He glanced at her with an expectant expression. "Pius," she explained with a wry twist of her lips, "didn't want to be plagued by the ideas of an inexperienced military tribune."

The bleakness of his countenance was replaced by a truncated outburst of laughter. The unanticipated sound caught him by surprise almost as much as it did her, and she wondered at the momentary perplexity in his gaze, a reflection of the fact he had thought himself incapable of such an open disclosure of levity. He was still staring across the stream, resuming his morose mood, but she knew she had his interest when he asked, "So what happened. You're father went to Britannia, and…"

"He had already obtained the command of various companies of men, none of whom were pleased at being sent off to the hinterlands, but they had served with my father and knew him for an able commander and a respectable leader.

"By the time they came to South Shields, where they were stationed, my mother's people, the Brigantes, were involved with an uprising of various other tribes. Of course, the companies under my father were called in to quell the revolt.

"So there on the fields just south of Isirium Brigantium, two armies were bout to meet, the cohorts led by my father, and the Brigantine soldiers led by my mother's father, King Aderturex."

He shook his head in puzzlement. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but unless my memory of military history is hazy, I re-call no battle having been fought against the Brigantes during the time of Pius' reign."

"Of course not," she said insignificantly. "Mother rode out between the two armies surrounded by a delegation of Celtic priestesses robed in white. The tribes' symbol for peace and mediation. Even my grandfather couldn't over-ride their authority; the Romans, however, were not quite sure what to do with them when they approached my own father.

"Father, fortunately, was a reasonably educated man concerning the customs of the isle, due mostly to the fact that his own family traced their origins back to Gaulish roots. The gens Crescenii were once as Celtic as mother's people, until Claudius extended senatorial privileges to the ruling tribal families, one of whom was father's.

"So," she continued, "on a horridly blustery day in late autumn, just as a drizzle was beginning to fall, mother walked alone to stand before father out on that field. She handed him a torque of silver with the insignia of Lupa, and placed in his other hand, the Silver Branch—the Celtic symbol of sovereignty.

"You serve Rome, she said. I serve my people. Together, we share a vision of what Britannia could be, and it need not be a vision of blood if you take my hand in marriage.

"Of course, " Nemhyn concluded, "father won more than the Brigantine peace. He also managed to weasel out a promise of added troops to the Briton auxilia. In return, when he eventually attained the rank to do so, he agreed to appoint chieftains of mother's people to some of the local magistrate positions in the surrounding towns. These pledges were sworn to be upheld so long as Roman and Celt co-exist together on the island."

She turned then, to look out on the water as well, letting him contemplate what she had just said for a few moments in silence.

When he spoke, it was with unwilling admiration. "She sounds like a courageous woman. Do you think it will last beyond her lifetime though; the peace she and your father won with that marriage?'

" You mean, do I think her actions will….echo into eternity," she elucidated, quoting his words with a small grin.

The look he gave her was slightly amused before becoming troubled once more. "I mean, what good did her action do if, after she and your father die, no one remembers the end it was meant to serve, or the motive behind it?"

"My mother and father both saw a vision of what Rome could be—a dream embodying Britannia where Her people—Her provinces—are allowed to contribute to the over-all greatness of the Empire if they were but granted the same privileges of her more established lands."

That made him laugh humorlessly, a sound that wrankled for it made her feel like some untried idealist, spouting notions of trite optimism to a more seasoned, knowing realist. "They see the ideal, then. Rome is hardly her people anymore…hardly a Republic. She is a few self-serving, greed-driven senators, controled into intimidation by the Guard."

"No," she argued back with more passion than she meant. "They see Her potential, but then Rome to my parents has ever been the freedom of Her hinterlands—not that whore of cities, "she spit out, "from which stems Her control."

He seemed startled by her tone, turning once more to watch her with an emerging look of respectful regard, cautious, as though seeing her in a new light.

"What about eternity," he prodded.

"I don't know, Maximus," she said quietly. "That's something you would have to ask my mother. Perhaps its measured in the minds of men, to keep alive the memory of an event long after that event has passed."

He contemplated what she said for a moment. Then tossed a pebble into the stream. "Or, perhaps eternity is like those circles of water fanning out, " he motioned with his hand, "from where that stone broke the surface. They widen into eventual nothingness. That is what I now believe eternity means—an action that once had purpose, but fades to insignificance in the minds of men and the march of time."

Again she negated him. "Or that action becomes a part of something greater—like the ripples from that pebble merging with the larger flow of the stream." She could tell he was becoming aggravated by the way she countered him.

He frowned, about to speak, but she forestalled him, saying, "Regardless of eternity, in Britannia, the actions of my mother and father did count for something. Roman and Brigantine now fight side by side against the northern tribes, united by a common cause in protection of the isle."

He had an uncanny way of throwing her off, turning the direction of their conversation back on her. "And what about you, Nemyhn—child of a Roman and a Brigantine. You never did answer my original question of how you fit into all of this."

It was a challenge of sorts, she saw—his attempt to stumble her conviction, make her doubt her words. While his statement didn't quite do that, it did make her pause to consider before answering slowly. "I…I am a child of two lineages, Spaniard. Born to one, and raised in the traditions of the other, belonging to neither, but drawn to both for different reasons too complex to expound on this night." That was all she could think to say, and he nodded, pondering her words as he turned to gaze back over the stream.

"You don't know where you belong in all of this yet, either, do you," he stated. The answer seemed to bring him an odd satisfaction.

She shrugged. "I heal. Because of that, I don't think too often of eternity since my duty is to try and keep people in the here and now.

"But, Maximus," she said with emphasis, "my training, too, is a gift of the isle—Greek and Roman learning practiced with Celtic liberties afforded to women of my mother's tribe. I would not have been allowed this had I been raised closer to the shadow of Rome."

He sniffed at that sardonically, his only response. For a few moments they sat in silence, lost to their own meandering thoughts. She wondered if anything she had said effected him in any fashion as she got up to leave with a sudden yearning for sleep, and the reassurance of her mother's calming presence. A strange sentiment, that—one she hadn't felt since she'd been a little girl.

Besides him inclining his head toward her, a farewell for the night, they might never have shared words at all, for he was once more unacknowledging of her presence, staring back across the murky waters of the stream.

She sighed inwardly, but before she stepped around the tree, some compulsion made her speak up one last time. "Things are different on the island, Spaniard."

"You won't let this drop will you," he said, almost indulgently.

She chose to ignore his tone, remarking, "I noticed you had gauged out the sign of the legions on your shoulder." That caught his sudden attention, a slight tilt of the chin as he looked up, his eyes direct, harboring ill-concealed consternation at her observation.

"Indeed, Rome may be dead to you," she said in low toned intensity. "Need Britannia be so as well?"

He blinked, as though the words struck him like a physical blow, his aloof manner cracking momentarily, a turmoil of feeling crossing his visage. She left him like that, to find what meaning he could in her parting assertion.

Both women, as had become habitual, were sleeping on their pallets by the time he sought his own bed that night, hoping he was exhausted enough from the day's travel to escape the nightmares which routinely haunted his oblivion nowadays. His strength had been returning steadily, and since he began walking next to faithful, stalwart Hercules, he pushed himself each day with determined will. The quicker his full faculties returned, the sooner he could be away from the two women, and their ambiguous plans for Rome—or for Britannia. It didn't matter, so long as he was not involved.

He'd come to inhabit a place in his soul where anger, and a removed detachment helped distance him from caring, from the plethora of emotions—none of them pleasant—that troubled his thoughts constantly and disturbed his dreams.

He'd almost come to hate sleeping as much as he did the waking world, wherein his last ditch effort to ensure Lucius' safety resulted in the boy's death while he had been spared once more, a misplaced man in a spiritless body, the dead amongst the living.

His dreams were haunted with visions of his wife and son, happy and at peace in their world of sunlight and wheat, but always separated from him by a vast expanse of water. He could never touch or talk to them. That was heartwrenching in itself.

The ones of Commodus were the worst though, his beloved emperor's deranged son wreaking a havoc of torment upon those he loved—Cicero, his wife and son, Marcus Aurelius. He would laugh maniacally, torturing them, Maximus forced to watch, helpless to do anything, a slave once more to the whims of the mad Caeser, bound by shackles, and gagged, suffering with the victims of Commodus' rage. And always, the same words: I loved them too, just as you did, all of them—my father, my sister, her son, Rome. That makes us brothers, still. So weep for them, brother. Weep for them and feel my outrage at having been cheated your death!

Visions of fire, the smell of burnt flesh and singed hair would fill his nostrils as Commodus carried out his acts of torment, the screams of the dying making him wake up in shaken terror—knowing it for only a dream. He knew it had to be only that. He had to believe that a man so debauched in life would meet only justice in death.

A man can only hope for two things at the end of life Maximus, he remembered Marcus telling him one night, years before, when the winds of winter howled forlorn across the snow covered mountains of Germania. To seek justice from the actions that have wronged him, and absolution for the sins he has committed against others.

And he had sinned. Greatly. These last two years, against his wife and son for not having defended them against the brutality of the Guard, suffering for his own stubborn adherence to the ideal of the State, acting in defiance of Commodus. Against Lucius for not safe-guarding his life, never anticipating the covetous jealously of a Guard accustomed to the privilege of despotic power. And ultimately, against Marcus Aurelius—for failing a dying man's wishes, leaving Rome to face god's knew what uncertainties, lead by an impotent Senate and a title of Caeser which carried with it no more authority than a knat flying into a maelstrom.

He was right, the man who had been hailed the Savior or Rome was no more. I am a husk of a body with no heart, no strength left to worry, for the Empire or the future. But these women wouldn't leave him alone, they kept pecking at him. It was unfortunate they hadn't yet seemed to figure out they might as well have been vultures picking at a corpse, for all the inspiration they awakened in him. Anger was about the only thing Maeve ever elicited in him, although her patient serenity never seemed to waver in the face of his outrages or sullen glum. Her daughter, he noticed, had taken to avoiding him almost completely, since they had set out to Genova, except to change his dressings and make him take the pain medication, sans sleeping potion.

He complied because it suited him too. Her mother was difficult enough to deal with, the calm peace hiding a deceptively iron will—a subtle means of making him follow her guidance to Britannia for reasons only now clarified. He didn't need her daughter, who had the temper of a hellion, harassing him as well.

Maeve hadn't been so subtle by the fire after revealing her identity tonight, blatantly pointing out the bargain they had agreed to before setting out to Genova. He may have come to a point where honor held no meaning to him anymore, but he still had pride, and in his pride he wanted no debts owed to anyone. He had promised Maeve Britannia if she told him who she and her daughter were. She had done so; now it was his turn to fulfill his part. He had only agreed to accompany them to the island, not stay with them thereafter.

He was aware they may well have been lying; he'd said as much to her daughter this evening. Her explanation, like everything else she ever said when she deigned speak to him, had been full of defensive vexation, the tones of one offended for having their honesty questioned. He knew deep down, Maeve had spoken the truth. Her daughter simply confirmed it; had her mother been lying, their guilt would have shown across Nemyhn's features as plain as day. For all her other qualities, the wry wit, the obvious independence she shared with her mother, a perceptive intelligence, she was a poor dissembler.

Their story also explained why they were as guarded in those times when they encountered squadrons of the Empires' soldiers as he was—shawls pulled closer around heads, faces lowered in apparent modesty, bowing to the command of Rome's troops. But he also observed the way they carried themselves when not in the presence of cohorts marching along the road, or occupying the towns they passed. They did not walk like peasants, stooped form years of hard labor, cowering under the eyes of those in positions higher than the class they supposedly occupied. Mother and daughter, both , stood tall, the mother somewhat shorter by a finger's length, her daughter more slender in her youth, each walking with the long stride of graceful confidence. At ease in a world that was not to be shied away from, but met with the poise of those accustomed to commanding the space around them.

Thus he had learned in two weeks of travel. He was unaware his own bearing --despite his outward glowering, the healing injuries, the invisible scars of slavery and its sorrows—mirrored theirs. He still carried himself with an unconscious strength, never having ceased to walk as a leader of men.

He turned restlessly on his mat, sighing, hoping in unworthy spite, the women were passing as unsettled a night. The nightmares may not plague him, but then, sleep obviously saw fit to elude him too. The sounds from the other side of the now banked fire, were maddeningly, those of regular breathing and the stillness of peaceful rest.

Need Britannia be so as well? Gods, he hated women, hated the way they could crack through two weeks worth of bitter detachment—or two years of embittered rage, for that matter, against a world he'd forsaken in the name of the arena—with a few well placed words, and that voice of solemn regret. Their disappointment at the actions, or lack thereof, when the men they entreated to aid them in their righteous endeavors failed to meet their expectations. I knew a man once, a man of principles…

At least then, the duty Lucilla had re-awakened coincided with his own desire for vengeance. What Maeve proposed was vague, not appealing to anything he wanted now, but disturbing…disturbing because it reflected the command of the god shining out of Marcus Aurelius' eyes that first night he'd dreamt. Maeve had called him fickle, the Wanderer. Maximus was a Stoic, a skeptic at that, questioning men's beliefs in gods. They live on the actions of men. He hoped that was true. He wanted no god, especially one he refused to give credence to, harassing him as well.

And as for women driving him to do things he wanted no part of, he had been ready to fight Maeve every step of the way to Britannia, fortified in his anger, his heart encased its hollow void.

Until she had brought up Trujillo, and his family. That was the one aspect of his buried grief that could still unman him at a word, and she'd known just what words to say, just as her daughter did, later that night. He had no doubt the older woman was a seeress, there was no way she could have known the things she did of him had she been less.

What he hadn't expected was Maeve's compassion, nor the understanding her daughter afforded him later, when he'd spoken of Lucilla. Or after that, when she had spoken of Britannia. Nemyhn's words had roused something in him that wasn't as dead as he'd been trying to convince himself—a will to serve a cause, find a purpose to life again. To learn how to live as a freeman in a world where pain was inevitable, and the best any man could hope for was that the gods granted him an existence without undue sorrow and a death with dignity.

Shadows and dust, Maximus. Shadows and dust! He smiled bitterly into the dark, staring at the overhead branches transposed against the velvet expanse of the night sky, wondering how Nemyhn would have responded to Proximo's words.

He didn't want this, to feel again. …salvage the dream. The question was, how? Feeling meant opening himself up, allowing himself to be at the mercy of chance, vulnerable to the choices made by others deciding where he should direct his life from here on. Need Britannia be so as well? Again, Nemyhn's words, the last she'd said before leaving him to the silence of the rippling stream and the hum of the evening's insects. They kept him thinking, doubting the indifference he'd adhered to with such devotion since he'd been called back form his Elysium.

His mind could not seem to find peace that night, and the unending cycle of this thoughts brought him to no definitive conclusions regarding the path he should chose. He did come to one decision though—that he would not think again of the island until they left Spain. The past still entrapped him too strongly, a grip unwilling to loosen, a vise strangling further inclinations of where to direct his future. If he had one.

The tragedy of the dead when they still walked, displaced, amongst the living.

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Chapter 5

O-kay, briefly: disclaimer is the usual...Dreamworks, blah, blah...

Max is cheering up a little in this one. Don't worry, there's still a little more angst in the last part of this first piece--what will be chapter 6. Which is written, but has yet to be typed, and I must study for my exam. Then onto book 2 and Britannia...and soundtrack, after soundtrack, after soundtrack for inspiration...lets see, i've, of course, got gladiator in the old cd right now, and braveheart, moll flanders, dances with wolves, and i'm onto last of the mohicans...all of which will be seeing ample playing time during book 2.

A little something about the name change: Lucius Castus was actually a dux Bellorum (military commander during wars) known as Lucius Artorius Castus, who inhabited Britain during the time of Commodus' early reign. Look at this as a bit of blatant foreshadowing for the second part of this story. Because of the name Artorius, there is some conjecture in the scholarly world that this commander, who incidentally was thought to have headed the Sarmatian cavalry stationed in Britain at the time of this story, and will be featuring very prominently in the next story, was one of the potential sources for the later legends of King Arthur (in answer to one of the reviewers...yes I love Gillian Bradshaw. No, much to my shame, I did not read Island of Ghosts...I didn't even know what her novel was about until after I thought up the outline of this story...I'm scared to read it now, in case of overlap, until I've written more of the setting in Britannia...although I may pick it up for inspiration. In any case, the woman is a goddess amongst historical authors, especially if you like classical history, and I would never even seek to approach her level in writing talent...she's an author for career, I'm one for hobby...and it's fanfic at that;). Anyhow, Lucius Artorius Castus fought a series of campaigns all throughout Britain against the Caledonii, the tribes inhabiting the area across Hadrian's Wall from Roman settled Britain, between 183-185. While I'm going to be twisting history, and as I said before, making it a bit schizoid bringing in elements from after commodus' death in 192CE, this is pretty much the general gist of my "inspiring muse".

Enough, read on: I realize this chapter seems a wee-bit frivilous, but angst gets to me after a while, and even in the movie, the man wasn't always doomy and gloomy...

Oh yeah, and about the prenomen and cognomen things mentioned in this chapter...there's a certain website that explains very nicely the formalities about Latin naming...one of which is the fact that the prenomen, um I think that's the first name of the roman gentry, while listed with the name in full, was often not the first name of common usage...hence Marcus Antius Crescens Calpurnianus would probably have gone by Antius and not Marcus...at least I'm guessing on that. In any case, I realize Cicero probably had another full name that was never mentioned in the movie, and that Castus is most likely a last name when used properly, but forgive the creative license I'm using here for the framework of this story...don't flame me too much...please;)

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He awoke the next morning with no memory of ever having fallen to sleep, but he must have, for the braying of the donkey was the next thing he heard, making him open his eyes to a world awash with bright sunlight and birdsong, feeling more rested than he had since taking to the road.

No dreams. He hadn't dreamt the night just past, and felt the better for it.

Both women were bustling about the camp, packing goods and readying the morning meal, a simple fare of bread and well-watered apple wine. He joined them after washing up by the stream, acknowledging them each with a nod of greeting, harnassing the donkey after eating his share, since they had finished securing their other provisions earlier, doing him the courtesy of letting him sleep longer.

For the first time, the lushness of the Italian spring brightened his mindset. Perhaps it was the simple fact of a few hours well rested slumber, but the heaviness of his emotions didn't appear to be weighing him down as much this morning. He would hardly have said he felt happy, nothing even approaching that level of cheerfulness, or that the qualms from the night before were not preying at the back of his mind, but he felt lighter somehow, less burdened by the crushing weight of grief that had imprisoned his soul these past weeks. He couldn't have said from whence this new bouyancy of his mood had come, but it put him in a more amicable state toward the women. Scarcely accepting of their guidance, especially after the revelations of the night before, but less anatagonized by their presence, almost welcoming of their companionship as it were.

So much was the difference in his bearing and mannerism that when Maeve motioned him to the side of the wagon, informing him that, "Your name Maximus, while common enough, is too well known for us to chance--", he merely cut in with a shake of his head, saying agreeably, "I've thought of that already." He could see she was preparing herself for another dispute. For the first time in two weeks, she mis-read him as he explained without animosity, "Don't worry, I've no reservations on giving over my name. If Maximus is to be dead to Rome, it won't do to be called by it."

Maeve's startlement was a mere raise of elegantly arched brows as her daughter asked expectantly, "Well, did you chose another name, then?"

"Lucius," he answered the daughter, but was looking directly into Maeve's icy-orbs. "For the child whose life was taken before he had a chance to know what living means."

The older woman nodded affably. "It's a neutral enough name, not likely to be associated with an ex-gladiator. Do you have a cognomen?"

"Castus," he said simply. "It was the prenomen of my devoted servant and friend, Cicero, who gave his life in order to release Rome from the clutches of a tyrant."

The older woman signalled her daughter to take up the reigns, and with a brisk snap they set off on the main thorough-fare leading to the gates of Genova. He walked beside where the older woman sat for a few moments more, before taking his now customary spot by Hercules' side. "Do you tell the guards at the gates of larger cities you enter the same story--that you and your daughter are wandering peasant healers from the northern islands?"

"Something along those lines, with a bit of a twist added in for good measure," Maeve said with an almost mischevious glint in her eye. "And now with you along, we're going to be amending our tale some to include your part, Spaniard."

He was hesitant to ask what Maeve meant, dreading the answer when he saw the dark look Nemhyn threw her mother at mention of their assumed disguises. Being the seeress she was, it turned out he didn't have to verbalize his puzzlement, as Nemhyn's mother continued. "You see, the story we give the wall guards usually goes something like this..."

That as she elaborated, delineating his part as the dutiful servant of two peasant women whose family had fallen on hard times, he discovered the reason behind Nemhyn's increasingly irritable countenance, and was witness to a rather impressive display of just how well the daughter could oppose her mother on certain points. Though as he'd suspected, the mother's way won out in the end, despite the furious protestations of the daughter which lasted until the gates of Genova, and had him thanking the gods that for once, it was not himself at which Nemhyn's temper was directed.

He also learned later that morning, despite her inability to lie convincingly, Nemhyn, and her mother, were actually quite adept at dissembling when they were required to: Nemhyn as the simple country girl awed by the magnifiscence of seeing the home province to the Queen of Cities for the first time in her life, her mother, displaying with seeming ease, a hunched, elderly woman, rocking and twitching, muttering under her breath to voices only she was privy to. His own part was none too taxing for that matter, the faithful servant required to hold Hercules' halter as he let Nemhyn do the majority of the talking with the customs guard.

A portly, bald soldier, bored and hassled by the number of people in line at the gate's booth, even at this early hour of the morning, he asked the typical questions: where they had come from, how long would they be in Genova, for what purpose. He listened to Nemhyn's answers with visible contempt, as she spoke with a deliberately heavy provincial accent.

"Herbs, sir, that's why we're here. Uncommon ones, such as not found on the island, but aplenty in the markets of Rome." Not quite gutter Latin, but spoken so roughly, Maximus had to look down, concealing his silent snicker as the guard struggled to understand her.

"Britons, then," the guard said, somewhat insolently. "How long in the city," he asked yawning, scratching the patchy stubble on his chin.

"Only till we catch passage, sir. To Targo."

"Targo," the man reiterated, puzzled. "Where the Hades is Targo?"

Nemhyn, evincing an attitude of timidity, said, "It's a port. In Hispania, isn't it, sir? I don't know exactly...never been to the mainland before."

Comprehension came across the soldier's face. "Tarraco. Is that what you mean?"

"Aye, sir, " Nemhyn confirmed eagerly in her exaggerated accent. "With my mum, sho's pained in her bones and not quite right in her mind, and our servant."

"Damned provincials," the guard muttered under his breath, still audible. "Ought to make it a requirment to speak proper Latin before you leave your island."

Based on the short fuse of her temper usually operated on, Maximus was expecting Maeve's daughter to erupt at some point during her discourse with the guard. Instead, she dimpled at the man apologetically, humbled, to all outward observors, by her ignorance of proper Roman speech. It was extremely convincing, her charade, and had Maximus not seen evidence of her true character while they'd been on the road, known her true origins, he would have been taken in as well.

Her smile had the desired effect upon the guard, as the portly officer relented somewhat, his rude manner, saying, "Provincial or not, you are a pretty thing, aren't you."

Maximus, holding the donkey's halter, saw her look down modestly, and gods help him, giggle like a school girl.

"Ah, can't see what harm you and the likes of your companions would do here in Genova," the guard said, waving them by and indicating the next group, a troup of roudy actors, to approach the booth.

Nemhyn just smiled again, climbing back into the wagon, snapping the reigns as Maximus strided next to Hercules, the group moving under the vault of the gate. The guard called, "At the docks young mistress, ask for Theseus the Fisher. He owns a ship large enough to carry your folk and the wagon. He offers an honest fee with a trustworthy crew. Tell him Dedus sent you."

"I shall, sir. Thank you much," Nemhyn returned, whispering under her breath as she faced forward,

furious, "Damned indigent--provincials my bloody arse. I could quote more Latin poets than you've probably ever heard of, and properly at that!"

They moved into the press of the crowd, making their way to the docks. Maeve, her voice shaking with laughter, said, "If you didn't do it so well, daughter, I wouldn't have you perform it. But you're so utterly convincing. At least this one didn't grope you."

"Grope you," Maximus repeated over the the din of Genova's human enpacked streets.

His words were the spark for the heated lashing of her rage, that until now, she'd been keeping in check, though, as before, he was not the immediate focus of her temper. That position he gladly let Maeve occupy. "You," Nemhyn huffed at her mother, "just like to see how much humiliation I can take! Don't try to patronize me by saying how well it works every time. And yes," she continued in the same voice towards him, "the last tried to grope me. A slimy Sardegnian when we went to Rome, pawed at me like a satyr."

"And-," Maximus urged, wondering if the man who had the audacity to take such liberties was still alive to tell about it.

"And...what," Nemhyn shot back in exasperation. "Believe me, in my homeland he would have gotten a dagger to the throat and a threat of being as gelded as Hercules. Here, I have to suffer it."

He cocked his head in question, catching himself as he was jostled into Hercules' shoulder by a harried looking errand boy. She caught his look, explaining, as to a simpleton, "It does no good to travel as a peasant woman if I blow our cover betraying the sensitivities of nobility. With you around," she added meaningfully, pulling back on the reigns abdruptly to slow Hercules from running over a woman trailed by three children, "the guards may still drop comments every now and then, but they leave off on the groping."

Maeve was drawing amusement from their conversation, saying nothing as the wagon made its slow, awkward way to the docks. He saw her try to suppress her chuckle though, when he said, against his better judgment, with feigned gravity, "Nothing like my presence to protect a lady's honor. But, what am I to do if they decide to grope me?" He supposed it was his poorly hidden smirk that incited her wrath this time, but she had caught onto his jest, failing horribly at keeping the laughter completely out of her voice.

"I don't know, Spaniard. Tell them Hercules will attack. He's very sensitive to insult done his family and is completely Roman in his aversion to relations between males."

A wise man might have known when to drop the teasing, but piquing Nemhyn was proving to be a rather newfound, and enjoyable past-time. And unlike the mother, who was still watching their exchange with unabashed mirth, the daughter had no impenetrable demeanor of a seeress.

"But, Nemhyn," he asked in assumed innocence, guiding the donkey through the noisy streets, stopping for people on their way to market, passers-by moving from one local vendor hawking wares to another, "What if the next guards take to Hercules?"

Her answering experession promised bodily harm, save that her eyes were dancing.

At which point, Maeve finally blurted out in varying degrees of merriment an alarm, "For the love of Brigid, stop the wagon, Nemhyn," reaching simultaneously for the reigns as her daughter, driving the donkey, almost collided with a man hauling freshly cut pork shanks and beef haunches, still dripping with blood, to the nearby meatery. The wagon came to a brusque halt that made Hercules' head jerk back and up, along with eliciting curses from a peddler of clay tablet moldings who had a cart behind theirs. The trio ignored the incensed man as Maeve directed, chuckling still, "It's about time, Spaniard, you drove Hercules through the crowd before my daughter runs an innocent city-dweller over in her temper, and you prostitute our poor beast."

As he and the younger woman switched places, Maximus said in passing, with exaggerated commiseration, "Hercules was missing the company of a woman anyway."

Taking the donkey's halter, still ignoring the outpourings of invective from the man behind them, she called back, grinning, "No hard feelings for losing my privledged place. Mother was getting scared of my driving. There's no need to do in an aging woman before her time."

That comment had Maeve tsk-ing in mock-offense, and him laughing outright, smiling openly. He took up the reigns, and they began to move again, when he heard Nemhyn vociferate over her shoulder, "I'm not sure, Spaniard, what happened to you between last night and this morning, but I'm almost thinking I preferred your glowering to this new mood of yours."

An incredulous, "Really," was his reply, as he began to bristle, thinking she meant it in offense, until he saw her smile back at him, a delightful flash of teeth a that lit her clean lined features to pleasing lovliness, and drew another exhilerating laugh from Maeve. He found their jocularity too contagious to pass up, and instead of reacting with animosity, he found himself smiling again, joining in once more to let the cleansing power of his own mirth soften the hard core that had formed around his heart

The docks were a chaotic clamor of rough and tough crewers moving about their labors over the loading areas and gang-planks which extended out into the harbor waters, encircled by the shanty vendor-stalls selling all manner or paraphanalia from fruits and cheeses, to mass produced deities meant to protect the safety of ships upon the high seas. And always, the drowning clamor of men at work coincided with the nefarious smell of fish wafting over the the entire spread of ships coming in and departing port-side Genova.

It was a day much like any other for Theseus the Fisher, though it was prgressing slower than he might have wished. He and his men had been held up by a cracked wine barrel earlier in the morning, and it had taken ridiculoulsly long, not only to stopper the leak, but to find a replacement adequate to ensure the wine didn't go bad. He prided himself on delivering good products in a timely fashion to his clientel, ensuring that the wines he shipped stayed as well-preserved as the day their containters were first sealed, and that oil distilled from the lavender fields growing thick in the hills along the Genovese coast did not go putured in its amphorae.

He'd been dubbed Theseus the Fisher by his wife in the first years of their marriage as a joke because he absolutely abhorred the overwhelming scent of the docks, the appearance of the scaly, slimy creatures most of his fellow comrades of the sea dealt in. He was, in fact, Thesus the Wine Merchant, but the former title had stuck amongst his crew over the years, and he'd never outrightly objected to it.

Now he stood here, considering whether or not to take on board a trio of peasant farmers from the norhtern isles...or he supposed they were peasant farmers. Probably more land-owning working class than mere peasants, he figured. They were a neatly dressed bunch, if simply attired, and they had their own donkey and wagon. The daughter did most of the talking, in a heavy provincial Latin, fluent enough for that, keeping her mantle drawn modestly over her head.

He tugged his beard with a pondering motion. "Humph. Tarraco, eh? Well, I won't lie, I wasn't planning on heading that far west this early in the year, though some of my deliveries, I suppose, could be re-scheduled for later. Who recommended my name, young miss?"

"Dedus, sir," the woman answered readily. "At the gate this morning."

He chuckled, deep and rumbling. His old friend was always ready to help a pretty woman, especially the slightly naive, somewhat taken in types.

"Your mother--is that your mother?" She nodded, and he asked, "What's wrong with her?"

"Hears voices sir, touched by the gods in some manner I'm not sure about. Beyond that, only the maladies of age. You've my promise, sir, she's not a threat to anyone and won't get in the way of you and your crew otherwise."

The open, pleading look on her face was very engaging as were her eyes, hazel--he always looked at women's eyes. She was quite becoming, actually. Setithes, one of his men, would probably be taken with her, ready to propose marriage by the end of the week it took to reach Tarrco from Genova.

"Humph," he whiffled out again. "Not your mother I'm worried about. It's the donkey crappering all over the cargo-hold stalls. My men aren't bastin' stable-hands."

"Oh," the girl said obligingly, "no worries on that sir. That's what our servant's for. He'll keep the bottom cargo-hold good and clean."

Theseus saw the servant, sitting up by the lunatic mother, react with a sharp raise of his head and a look at the girl afoot that spoke volumes about the indignity of his coming task. The girl looked back at the servant in turn, smiling with a curious mocking-sweetness, and then to Theseus.

"Seems your servant there has soemthing to add about that," Theseus commented. "Never a good thing to have an importunate servant. Too bad he's not a slave," he continued, studying the physique of the other man closer, with open admiration. "Say there's a whole lotta slave cargo headed for Tarraco and the arena these days, renewed popularity after that fiasco in Rome month past. From the look of your servant, miss, he might do well in the arena."

Theseus wasn't sure, but he thought he saw something in the gaze of the girl spark, harden perhaps, before the look disappeared, fleeting, replaced by a flashing smile and her gay laughter. "By the Fates, Lucius...in the arena," she said doubtfully, waving her hand with an inconsequential manner toward the servant. "He's never so much as lifted anything sharper than a sickle for harvesting grain sheafs. He's served our family faithfully for years, now, since the death of my da."

Theseus, still taking in the build of the man in the wagon, who was now looking down at the reigns in his hands, seemingly chargined by the reference to his less than servantly attitude, highly doubted the man never lifted anything more than a sickle. But Theseus knew when not to ask further questions of potential passengers. So long as they paid, and either stayed out of the way of his men while on board, or helped in the labor even, it was not for him to judge what manner of story those he took on his ship told him.

He hurumphed again, saying," Be that as it may, young miss, but in my experience--"

"THESEUS!" The shout came from one of his men on the dock, breaking into his remark. "WE NEED YOUR HELP! ONE OF THE DAMNED AMPHORA IS CRACKED!"

He swore, quite inventively. It was a trait he was known for, that his men never ceased to draw amusement from, but his wife scolded him on whenever he was home.

Whatever he'd been about to advise the girl on, it was forgotten as he said somewhat gruffly, his attention occupied with his merchandise, "You can load your animal and wagon on now. We depart in a half an hour, so you might as well just stay on board and get settled--we'll discuss fees later."

The woman agreed good-naturedly, nodding, pulling the donkey's halter to lead the animal up onto the deck, the servant snapping the reigns lightly. "And you," Theseus warned, now to the servant, "don't go getting into trouble with my men. We'll be together for a good week and I need no confrontations from a hireling who over-estimates his worth."

He assumed the servant was intimidated, for he was very carful to keep his eyes averted, responding to Theseus's tone with a stiff, "That's understood."

It was enough for the sailor. Despite the initial bullying stance he took when confronting new passengers to his ship, he was a fair man, and tried not to pre-judge others on first impressions. He spit once, absently, nodding to the peculiar trio, and walked up the plank to his vessel, already considering how he was going to deal with the cracked amphora.

Maximus wasn't intimidated. Maximus was fuming, and Maeve supposed, he had a valid enough reason to be. Her daughter had really pulled a wicked ruse on him by assigning such a menial task.

He was arranging their things below deck with Nemyhn, cross-tying the donkey, securing the wagon and its contents for the voyage. "Is this your idea of some crude joke," he remonstrated heatedly. "A stable hand?"

Her daughter's answering look was withering. "It was the only thing I could think of right then. You're supposed to be a servant, no?"

"That," he responded with angry emphasis, "was humiliating!"

"You," she rejoined, "didn't have to react with such affront. Why not announce to the world who you really are, for all the care you put into your demeanor. The point of covering up our identities isn't to have them guess at who we are the first day we journey out on sea," adding, "and if you want humiliating, try having them gawk at you like a main dish in a five course banquet!"

Maeve, sitting on a rough-hewed bench, listening to them bicker back an forth, thanked the gods for small mercies: that they were still attentive enough, despite the rising rage, to not raise their voices overly much. The men above would have been provided a treat worth scampering for had they heard what was being said below deck. As it was, she was sure the captain, Theseus, suspected something was amiss concerning their story, but had the sense to not ask questions.

"Oh you needn't worry yourself there. That...fisherman," Maximus snapped back at her daugther, saying the word like an invective, "did enough gawking in my direction to make me feel like a prize gem on a jewler's stand!"

And we were all getting on so well earlier this morning, Maeve thought trivially. Time to intervene. Their exhange would only serve to instill more hard feeling. Returning to the dispostion of the sane momentarily, she cut in before her daughter could come back at Maximus with another trenchant remark, letting the intonations of her voice soothe the younger persons like oil upon parched skin. "Enacting this charade isn't easy for any of us, but its necissity I think we can all understand. Our dear Theseus' perceptive suggestion about entering you, " she went on, looking at Maximus, " in the arena games struck a little too close for comfort to my liking."

He didn't quite flinch, but she saw his eyes alight with grim realization to the meaning of her words. He knew this already, she guessed, but hearing it helped perhaps, to reinforce their need to dissociate their normal behavior with any relation to their actual identities. That meant acting out their parts in all their authenticity, whether it was herself babbling to the gods, her daughter acting like a country simpleton, or Maximus cleaning after the donkey.

However, her daughter had evinced just a little too much satisfaction from relegating that task to him. "Besides," Maeve added, "if you're concerned about being the only mucking up after Hercules, my daughter forgot to mention she spent the better part of her girlhood in the stables as a child. She'll be glad to use the expertise she gained there to help you clean after the donkey as well."

It never ceased to amaze her, the curses that could come from the mouth of an educated, literate woman, like Nemyhn, supposedly raised to the genteel standards of Roman nobility, when infuriated. Except that the genteel part had been passed over in lew of Maeve having been a less than traditional Roman mother, her daughter recieving the better part of her training, and raised the better part of her life, along a military out-post of the northern frontier. Hence, as the situation stood, Maeve presumed, as she had come to over the years, her daughter's normally less than lady-like deportment was no more a source of intimidation or concern than Maximus' volatile nature.

Maeve found it rather funny, really, but knew better than to react with nothing other than a bland look toward the youger woman.

It was Maximus who suprised her, however, for the second time that day, making the leap from insulted hosility to humor with a laugh, no doubt caused by Nemyhn's outraged swearing. A laugh that started deep in his chest, shaking his shoulders, and rendering him helpless of speech for a few moments. Maeve, with her characterisitc faint amusement, thanked the gods again, that there was no loose utensils within reach of her daughter that could serve as useful projectiles. "You have to admit," he tried choking out between guffaws, "the odor is bound to dissuade potential gropers." Standing by the donkey, he gave the beast a fond pat on the muzzle.

Nemhyn was trying determinedly to keep her own face straight. "Great, so now you emerge from your doldrums simply to make sport of my circumstances. Just remeber who's the stable hand and who's the country-girl."

Maeve suggested, "You two could always switch roles if you wanted. Not to say the men up above may not wonder at it, but according to them, we're little better than ignorant northerners with eccentric customs anyway."

Maximus, looking her way, started chuckling again. "The beard, though...how would we--," he broke off with a movement of his hand tracing his chin, indicating her daughter's lack of facial hair.

Nemyhn gave them each a look that threatened expulsion over-board once the ship left port, though her eyes were twinkling. Maeve knew that gleam; it meant her daughter was about to add her own two drachmas worth to the banter. "Mother, don't you dare respond to that. You've offered enough helpful suggestions today."

"And you, Spaniard," Nemyhn said, directing her mock censure onto Maximus, "ought to be more careful with whom you pick sides."

"Why is that," he asked, smiling, knowing she was jesting.

"Becuase mother, here, gets off easy as the mad woman. She doesn't have to do anything but rock back and forth and babble to the gods. You and I, however, get to clean up after the damn donkey."

"You have a point," he said consideringly as each of them looked to Maeve now, who put up her hands in a warding gesture, openly chuckling herself.

"You two ought to have more respect for the slack-witted elderly," she admonished both of them, in her own defense.

One of the crewers from the above deck called down, interupting anymore of their discourse, telling them they were ready to set sail. When the trio was sure the man above had resumed his usual shipboard duties, Maximus replied to her in wry appreciation, securing the last of their miscellaneous items as Nemhyn seated herself next to her mother, "Those words are hardly the first I would use to describe you, Maeve, even if you were deaf, dumb, and blind, and still babbling to the gods like a mad woman."

She found herself laughing at that, heard her daughter, in an echo of Theseus, hurumph at Maximus' comment. A sound that told Maeve, for once her daughter and the ex-gladiator were in concurrance rather than discord. Leave it to me to be the object upon which they fix a united front, she thought, shaking her head.

Better that than having to listen to them argue for a week in the close, ship-bound quarters.

The mood of high spirits with which they embarked from Genova, so at odds with the glum of their overland journey, marked their time on the sea to Tarraco. The difference, Maximus realized, was being in the presence of men again. Men who hadn't known the excess of vanity and corruption which came with power, nor experienced the harsh brutalities of slavery. These were men who made up the blood of the Empire's citizenry, despite asking any trumped up, toga-attired senator who would have held the lack of familial history dating back to the first founders of the Roman Republic disqualified all but the most elite from that distinguished standing.

Maximus knew better though, as he helped Theseus and his crew with their tasks on board ship--still healing injurres permitting. In spite of the captian's intially crass attidude toward him, Theseus proved to be a man of decent sensibilities, honest in his dealings with the women, advising Maximus to not over-strain a still mending arm and ribs, though the captain was thankful enough for the added pair of hands when loading and moving the cargo around at their occassional stops along the coast. The sailor had a sense of humor courser than that of an army barracks, and eyes that would sparkle like twin sapphires when he would tease Setithes, a fellow crewer from the Greek colonii in southern Italia, about the man's evolving infatuation with Nemhyn. The other sailors would join in the ruckus laughter, trading jibes--two brothers from an island off the Greek mainland, a man born in Ostia, raised in the African provinces, and Theseus' son, a boy of 17, traveling with his father, learning the family trade.

The blood of the Empire's citizenry. Men who worked at honest jobs for honest livings, supporting families and raising new generations, moving about the peace of Imperial ruled lands and Imperial-guarded seas with never a thought to the shifting dynamics of Rome's power structures--Her government and military--taking for granted those structures were as eternal as the word of Rome Herself.

It seemed an unspoken agreement that neither he, nor the women, wanted to compound this temporary respite playing the parts of common folk, with mention of Pertinax, Britannia, or Rome. Nemhyn performed her role with smooth expertise, the concerned daughter of simple country folk attending to Maeve, who, if one had not known her true attributes, enacted the character of the mad with ease. Himself, he partook in the men's badinage with passive appreciation, laboring with them side by side, hauling their casks of wine and amphorae of oils, mending sails, and the like, sometimes adding a jest of his own that endeared him to the crew, albeit, remaining a man of few words for the greater part of their voyage.

There was a day, toward the end of their week together, as the port of Tarraco came ever closer, he knew when the bitterness of past weeks was beginning to perceptibly reduce its hold over him. They were unloading the last of wine barrels at a small fishing village somewhere along the coast of Gaul, and one of the brothers, examining the fresh scars across shoulder, arm, and side--the men worked bare chested in the heat of day attired in the simple linen kilts of generations of sea-goers--said almost enviously, "Ah, Lucius, those wounds don't look like something sustained in a fieldhand's work. What happened?"

It was curious, the absence of bitterness that usually stirred in his soul, or the sour taste that came to his mouth at mention of a life still too recent in tragedy for casual reference. He only looked to Nemyhn, who had caught his eye with a warning glint, enjoying the sun above deck with her mother, and smiled impassively. "Someone tried to take excessive liberties with the lady one night in a tavern we stopped at." Her features relaxed, and she grinned at his fabrication.

He left it to her to invent the rest of the tale, for the brother wanted to know who had won the scrabble. Maeve's daughter was easy in the company of men, not intimidated by their seemingly rough humor, and they were laughing uproarisly by the end of it. Especially at the part where he cracked an ale-mug over the eros-inspired assailant's head, throwing him out the door of the tavern into a local dung-heep.

At least most of the crew was laughing. From the corner of his eye, Maximus saw Setithes at the prow, glance over at him watchfully, concieveably with concern for the woman he'd developed an infatuation for, or maybe in self-preservation, careful to not cross ways with her servant and do her unintended insult, so sharing the fate of the imagined aggressor.

Maximus only wished, with a sardonic twist of his lips, the actual tale of his injuries had been so comedically inspiring.

Towards dusk that same day, when the men were below deck eating their evening meal, Nemyhn entertaining them with a raunchy tune she must have picked up from a life raised along a garrison-outpost, Maximus took advantage of a solitary moment, coming out to lean over the side-rails of the ship's upper deck. He gazed onto a passing coast lined with gentle hills and craggy shores, darkened to a sublime velvet blue-black by a sun which turned the glass-like waters of the Mediterranean a molten gold before dropping below the horizen.

He wasn't suprised when Nemyhn came above, perhaps an hour later, to join him, just as the first stars and a pale slice of moon were aglimmer in the sky over-head. She's drawn her shawl back, gathering it around her shoulders in the cool of the evening, saying, "We've been blessed with fair weather this voyage. Setithes tells me we arrive at Tarraco on the morrow."

"That soon," he replied. "Has he asked for your hand in marriage yet?" It was said lightly, a glimpse of a smirk crossing his features. She turned on him with a quick movemnet of her head, scowling initially, gradually becoming a smile and soft chuckle when she realized he was teasing.

"Please, he's not that charmed by me yet. I think he's frightened by Hercules."

"Understandable, since he's been the one mucking the donkey's place below on the days you're supposed to."

"That," she exclaimed with mock defensiveness," is only because I've been cleaning up on the days you're supposed to thanks to mother and her guilt trips."

He laughed at that, changing the subject before they got into another quarrel over the donkey. "Are those the kinds of songs daughters of generals always sing--the one I heard earlier tonight? Those lyrics would have done a bar-performer proud."

With raised brows, she said, "Are you having doubts again, as to the truth of mine and my mother's origins?"

Chuckling, he answered, "Not after the words in that song. I can well believe you spent the majority of your--," here he was careful to look around, be sure none of the crew was in listening range. "--your girl-hood along a border-wall crawling with soldiers."

"Mmhmm," she concurred with a half-smile. "Don't forget the garrison hospitals during my training. It's amazing the songs men sing to occupy their time while they wait for injuries to mend. What astounds me is that they actually march to tunes like that: about a shepardess, her goat,and a wandering ruffian."

"Right. The garrison hospitals," he repeated in a deliberatley vague tone. "Who knew the acts of love could exist in so many forms, and that a high-ranking officers daughter would come to sing about them to a crew of sailors."

It was the words or the tone, maybe, that finally set her off this time, when she admonished, all temper and some laughter, "Don't you dare take the moral high-ground on this one, Spaniard. I'm sure you could share a few tunes yourself. You were, of all things, a soldier once."

Wasn't I, he thought with a sudden forlorn, distant sadness, dampening for a moment, the light-hearted manner of their repartee. She must have seen the look that fell across his countenance, for she was suddenly muttering an uncharacterisitic, "I'm...I'm sorry...I didn't mean to..."

"No. No sorry. It just caught me off-guard for a moment. This last week has been...relaxing. Sort of."

She gave him a curious look. "Except for Hercules, I mean," he clarified with a sudden smile, attempting to ease past the awkward allusion to his past.

It worked, making her grin wickedly. "Don't get me started on the donkey. You're quite dreadful at mucking stalls you know."

"I know. It was the easiest way to get you to do my work," he said with a wicked flash of his own. He heard her expulse a righteous breath indignantly, before he went on. "And as for tunes...," at which point he shared three or four from his old marching camp days in the field. With lyrics that shocked her to blushing even while she was laughing helplessly, only to sing them the next day at noon-tide, her parting gift to Theseus and his crew, coming to port in Tarraco.

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Chapter 6

Alright, this concludes the last chapter of this first installment. Hope it was worth the time for you all to read it. Disclaimer doesn't change, and as for Lucilla--don't worry...she will be back in the story. A wee-bit later though, though she does pop up once in a while in little spurts for the next book. All I have to say is FINALLY we get to Britannia in this one, and for the next one, the majority of the story is set on the island, though there is an excursion to Amorica (northern Gaul), later on, and a certain emperor will be visiting the island as well, which sets in motion a whole bunch of events....getting way ahead of myself there though. See, the ideas are there...they just have to get written.

One more note--I agree, having Lucilla and Maximus meet again would possibly be unrealisitic, however, I don't think it too far fetched if they were to rendezvous at some point over the span of 2 or three years. However, it's good to keep in mind, by that point they will both have taken different paths with their lives, and circumstances being what I want them to be in this story, I'm really not avid on having them get back together again. BUT...we still have to get there first...meanwhile, read on and to one of the reviewers who is a fan of the infamous Sarmatian cavalry...they feature as major players...well, at least a few of them...women included...in the next story. (As a side note...there's another wonderful theory that suggests the origins of the Amazons might have stemmed from the actual Sarmatian women. It was recorded by one or two classical historians that their women, before they married, were required to kill a man in battle. This really has no pertinant connection in this story at the moment, just a "for your info" sort of thing;).

Read on...oh yeah, and also...in the movie, I guess maximus did bury his wife and son...but i'm going on the assumption here that he didn't...sorry for the mistake, but by the time this was written, then i saw the movie again, um, the story was finished...forgive me in the name of creative license, please;)

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Like a fading dream one tries to cling to, the after images--especially if it was a pleasant one--disappearing with each passing moment of awakening, leaving behind only fragments of memory and a void of something precious being stolen away, although the dreamer doesn't know exactly what--the light hearted atmosphere that had sustained the small trio from Genova, over the waters to Tarraco dissipated. Not all at once, for each of them, Maximus, Nemhyn, and Maeve, tried to cling to the euphoria of joy that surrounded Theseus and his men. With each step taking them further from the rickety docks of port-side Tarraco, though, sweeping them up into the passing assortment of animals, humans, and vehicular traffic of the paved byways typical to the colonia's business and governmental districts, the mood dampened once more. Although neither of the women had mentioned it, it was as though the solemnity of their coming task--consecrating the remains of the unburied--what drove their journey westward to Trujillo rather than north, had already imprinted a sobriety over the small group.

Although, at the moment, that wasn't the first thing on Maximus' mind as he stared ahead from his vantage-point in the wagon over the passing crowd, just able to make out the contours of the marble columns gracing the entrance to Caesar Augusts' alter set upon the highest hill of the city. An eternal reminder of the glory of Rome in the days when She had been a Republic, and of the man who had made Her an Empire, his deified image of limestone modeled after the Greek god of thunder, protecting his city from ill-fate.

The blatant reminder of Imperial Rome's glory only hastened the fleeting remnants of joy that had sustained the over-sea journey, and the trio walked in an odd silence for a time, Maximus driving the donkey with absent care, mindful of passers-by, Maeve by his side, and Nemhyn walking up ahead, by Hercules.

Tarraco itself hadn't changed much since the last time he'd come to these shores. A younger man, less hardened, more eager in his unseasoned youth, he'd been transformed a newly sung hero after his second tour of duty under Verus in the east. A man, fresh to the command of other soldiers, not comfortable with their unquestioning loyalty of his leadership, for suddenly he was deciding the fates of his fellow comrades--men he'd marched with, ate with, fought beside, watched fall in battle, or lived to see another. Thus was the life of a legionnaire made. Yet, he hadn't been coming home to celebrate with his family the new promotion, taking pride from the look of love in his father's eyes, warmed by his mother's praise. He'd been coming back to these shores seeking solace from a broken heart, escaping the crushing nonchalance of Lucilla as she'd told him she was to marry Lucius Verus. That's simply the way of it Maximus. Our social rank is too different to allow us to marry. Father would never hear of it, no matter how fond he has grown of you these last few days.

That had been before he'd served under Marcus and grown to know the man as a second father to himself.

No, indeed Tarraco hadn't changed much at all since he'd last come here. Perhaps the looming granite structures, under which they passed, of the palatine district's Imperial buildings, stately in their geometrically aligned grandeur, were less jaw dropping to the man who'd seen Rome than to the boy he'd once been, gazing up at their heavy steled supports with the disbelieving wonder one would pay a giant, standing by the side of his father in stunned awe. The forum too, seemed smaller, set down in the middle southeast nucleus of the city, though it could still boast a crushing wealth of persons from every corner of the Empire: Judeans from the east, performing their daily rituals of prayer, one or two Egyptians selling their magic charms of love and ill-fortune. A peasant wife from the local countryside shoved around Nemhyn roughly, on her way to the egg vendor on the opposite side of the market square, while city magistrates, their togas marking them as men of pre-eminence, walked with a more stately pace toward the streets climbing to the consular buildings--one of them even giving Hercules a pat on the muzzle as they passed. A band of formidable looking men, their blond hair and beards, long swords at their hips marking them as northern auxilia, were gathered outside a tavern chatting up the local prostitutes, their features in striking contrast to the watchful, leopard like grace of the dark-skinned Numidian soldiers stalking the opposite side of the plaza.

And of course, like a curse from his recent past coming to haunt him, the inevitable press of the crowd took him and the two women by the circus arena, its arched entrance of the outer colossal facade gathering with a throng of eager spectators even at this hour of the morning. Seeing the lines of chained, beaten prisoners, the cart loads of gladiators waiting their turn to seek death or glory before the hoots and cat-calls of a swarming mass of onlookers, proved too immediate a reminder that it was not so long since he'd been in similar circumstances himself...what maybe three or four weeks prior.

This was when he felt the last of the jovial mood that had accompanied the trio over the waters disappear completely, replaced by that grim, dark echo of his grief that had never quite subsided, but had lessened considerably, or so he'd thought. Till now.

He hadn't known he was so obvious in his scrutiny, but Maeve, with poorly disguised disgust--the most distress he'd heard in her tone yet--said, "It seems such a waste, doesn't it? All of those lives, and most will either be fed to lions or find their end at the edge of a blade. All for the amusement of a mob."

He had learned something in the last few weeks: to value her words, if not always agreeing with them. In that sense, the flavor of his renewed mordancy was somewhat different, for he accepted her presence, and that of her daughter, almost as friends. They were all he had in a world where he was truly without allies: two rather strange, eccentric women traveling in assumed guise as peasant herbalists. The thought wasn't an entirely comforting one, but at least he wasn't completely alone to face an unknown future.

"For some," he replied to her remark softly, after a moment, "that death is not so unwelcome." His gaze was hard and empty as he studied the line of ragged Christians they passed beseeching their God for mercy.

"When they haven't a choice in the matter," Maeve countered gently, "it is a death with little meaning."

He smiled morosely at that, thinking of Proximo, Cicero, Lucilla's son, wondering if their deaths had any more meaning than that of the unfortunates awaiting their fate in the arena. And of himself, the price of his freedom, the cost, he was beginning to realize, of his humanity, his ideals. He hadn't been aware of that until coming back to his homeland--how different a man he was now compared to the one he had been.

But if his ideals were, perhaps, deadened in him, they weren't in Maeve's daughter, who caught both him and the older woman off-guard, for neither had known she'd been listening to them over the din of the crowd as she spoke out in a rage to tangible it made her voice shake, "This is what sickens me about Rome," her eyes on the bruised and battered lines of victims. " A world where war and death are at no shortage in their affliction, and an empire that considers itself the empitomy of enlightenment, making a mockery of these people's lives by drawing amusement from their blood spilled so pointlessly."

He saw Nemhyn's mother nod in agreement as he addressed each of them in a bleak, toneless voice, "You forget, both of you, they aren't people anymore. They are slaves, and as such, their lives are worth nothing."

Nemhyn seemed on the verge of a sharp response, her eyes sparking in negation of his statement, but when she saw his expression, she only blinked, swallowed visibly, and looked away to face forward once more. Her own countenance said enough though, a silent protestation: you may think that, but you are wrong to do so, and I will never believe you. Her unspoken conviction echoed her mother's next words.

"No, Spaniard," Maeve's voice came low, but clear over the noise of the rabble. "They are still people. That we never forget...the nature of our work will not let us forget. You simply need to remember."

He frowned at her, biting out, "You've never been a slave. You don't know what it is to lose everything that once defined your humanity."

Maeve turned to him with eyes like frozen crystal, while her daughter looked over her shoulder once more, an unexpected, troubled sympathy crossing her features before she faced forward, running her hand along the donkey's neck. It wasn't until after her mother spoke, the older woman's words hitting hard, that he was left to wonder at whom her daughter's look had been directed.

"Don't I, Spaniard," Maeve said coldly. "No matter how my tribe has allied itself with Rome, or my island with the Empire, I am still the child of a conquered people. How much, do you suppose, has been lost from my people's legacy...my people's legacy, not Rome's, as we learned to re-shape our lives in order to survive. That has been the fate of many of the peoples the Eagle has incorporated under her wings, but out of that something new has risen--manifested in my sons and daughter. A fusion of two lineages, re-defining the Dream of Rome." She forestalled the remark he was about to make with a wave of her hand, continuing, "If you chose to leave us in Londinium, at least take that as a parting lesson to yourself Lucius...who was once Maximus. The man who was a general, a slave, and now a...," She left off for him to finish.

Which he couldn't of course. He couldn't think of what to reply, staring over the top of Hercules' head toward the parallel projecting turret stones set high upon the looming walls of the city's western perimeter, not glowering as before, simply thoughtful, if a little grim, lost in his own musings as to the uncertainty of the lot he'd thrown in with these women. Then, remembering his sleepless night from a week before, outside of Genova, he pushed aside, with willful effort, anymore thoughts of Britannia, renewing his vow to himself to not think on the island until after Trujillo.

Trapped in his own quandary, he did not see the light of infinite pity that came into the older woman's eyes as she looked on the last of the sorry slaves they went by, nor from where he was seated, could he see the kindling in Nemhyn's expression as the daughter nursed her own silent outrage against the abuses heaped upon the powerless in the face of tyranny.

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As it was turning out, thoughts of Britannia were becoming less frequent almost by default the further west they rode, for with each passing day, memory became a web entrapping him in its tendrils. The women made no mention of the future either, sensing perhaps, his preoccupation with remberence, the heat of the Spanish sun beating down upon them as they plodded their way along the outskirts of villages dotting vistas of flourishing grain fields, girdled in the distance to the north and west by gray-hued, snow-capped mountains.

Shepards passed them now and then, moving their herds of sheep or cattle along the road, shouting amidst the bleating and lowing of their beasts. Hercules sometimes brayed into the cacophony, adding his own opinion of his fellow migrating beasts, and Nemhyn would say to the faithful donkey with a scratch to his ears, nodding at the other herd animals moving by on the road, "Look, it could be worse for you. You could be headed off to someone's table, the main course at meal rather than just laboring with a wagon behind you."

Hercules never deigned to reply, unfailingly stalwart and steady.

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Recollections assaulted him with a poignancy he never anticipated, recalling the way he'd run, as a boy, through fields like those they now passed, chasing after his dog, hearing his mother call him in for the evening meal, asking if he'd finished his chores.

And some years later, riding on this same road, only it hadn't been with two women and a donkey, but on a horse, next to his tutor, Fulvus, debating the intricacies of Plato, the histories of Strabo. Still in those awkward years just short of manhood, when he itched to see what the wider world had to offer, his youthful enthusiasm held in check by the loving patience of his father insisting he finish his education before heading to the army.

And later still, as a young soldier stepping off the boat in Tarraco, seeking to blight out the afflictions of a severed first love. It was like that with Lucilla; for her to know something as significant as the fact of her marriage to Verus, arranged years before when she'd barely been a girl of nine or ten, and only reveal it to him after they had come to share every other intimacy lovers did in the dark, dim hours of the night, in the delirious, desire filled light of day.

The picture in his mind, now, as he sat before the evening's flickering campfire, was one from years before, listening to the soft bubble of the stew Maeve had prepared with her daughter, sipping from his cup, the voices of the two women soft murmurs filling the hush of the summer night.

Lucilla, beautiful as only royalty could be, in her nakedness and youth. A deceptive youth. The things she had done to him earlier that evening--in a place on the other side of the Empire, a time long swallowed by the past--coming to each other with the unfurled passion of young lovers, moving against one another in the slowly mounting rapture of coupling until they were both sweating and gasping in each other's embrace, were not the actions of any innocent, untried girl.

Later, propped on his elbow, languoring in the lazy aftermath of sex, stroking the unbound strands of her hair, fanning out from where she lay, its honey-brown masses barely concealing the flawless ivory of her skin, nor the slender delicacy of her limbs, he mentioned something about serving under her father for his next four year campaign along the northern fronts of the Danube, possibly asking for her hand in marriage when it was concluded.

That was when she'd spoken those words: That's simply the way of it Maximus. Our social rank is too different to allow us to marry. Father would never hear of it, no matter how fond he has grown of you these last few days. And then, My marriage was arranged years ago to Verus. It needn't mean we still can't be lovers. Those words were like falling off an unseen precipice, stabbing through the joy blinding him since being in her presence again.

You have known of this, he'd asked, rising to sit at the edge of the bed, suddenly wishing for his tunic, though he'd never felt discomfited by being unclothed in her presence before.

Maximus, she'd begun scolding and playful, reaching for him, don't get so--, but he'd cut her off in his rising anger, standing to pace the room. You have known of this, and you said nothing. Is this why your father has come to Syria from the northern front? Is the wedding tomorrow, I suppose. He was gathering his garments off the floor of her room. Her guest room, in the house of the man he'd served under, on loan by the provincial governor to shelter Marcus Aurelius and his retinue. All of them under the same roof, with the man she was supposed to marry.

Next week, she'd answered falteringly. It's next week.

In seconds, he was dressed, exiting her rooms, leaving her to call out after him, careful to be discreet in the halls of the house Verus had rented, feeling as though he'd been deceived in some immense fashion bordering on treachery.

He hadn't spoken to her again. The next morning, he'd begged Lucius Verus the opportunity to sail earlier than the planned departure with his new commander, Marcus Aurelius, wishing to see his family back home before his next tour of duty was to start, promising to rendezvous with Aurelius and the legions by the early summer in Aquincum, Lower Pannonia.

The next time they were to meet, he'd served three years already along the Germanian front, a battle wary general, and battle weary. A husband, newly a father, hungry for the sight of a son he had yet to see, and Lucilla, a new mother herself.

It was strange to think how so little time, the passage of three or four years, could change a person.

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He did not speak of that memory to Maeve or her daughter. It was too personal as yet, too much a part of a past separate from the reality governing his current circumstances. Despite that, he had no compunctions about telling the two women of his other recollections: of his childhood on his father's farm, his service to Rome in the military. The fact that the success he'd found, climbing through the ranks of men as a gifted warrior, later, an accomplished cavalryman, and as a commander of men himself, had been largely unanticipated. The prestige and influence that came with rank, unforeseen, a hard thing to come to grips with when one had not been raised to expect such concessions.

On a different night, later in the week, he'd explained to Nemhyn and Maeve as they waited for their dinner to roast over the fire, "It was unfortunate I never had the ambition to go with the privilege. The only thing I wanted was to perform my duty as a soldier, return to my home, farm my lands, watch my son grow, make love to my wife."

Nemhyn, poking at the hare to see if it was cooked fully, said with sensitive precision, "Lack of ambition doesn't sound like such a character flaw."

Maeve, joining in the converse, stated observant, "Lack of ambition is what won you the respect of Marcus Aurelius."

He glanced at the older woman through the dancing shadows cast by the firelight, remarking sardonically, "And won me the hatred of his son."

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Which of course, spoke for itself, the source, one could say, of his great sorrow. A sorrow that became increasingly prominent as the trio with their wagon and donkey, neared the border markers of fields that had once been his.

Fields still blackened to cinders despite the new growth of weed and scrub grass, just as the poplars lining the causeway remained bare-branched and soot coated. A testimony to the miasma of death that seemed to linger around the homestead, stagnant and putrid.

Halfway up, Hercules, ever patient and compliant Hercules, came to an abrupt halt with no tension on the reigns from Maximus. The animal would not be coaxed by either woman, braying in fear and protest, refusing to go further.

Indeed, Maximus couldn't blame the beast as he crawled down from his seat on the wagon, walking past with steady, purposeful steps to stop just before the stone arch arcing over the fore-court entrance to his old home. He felt as though they had entered the lands of the dead, in truth. The sky had taken on a reddish glow, the descending sun's rays blocked by the surrounding hills, the residual of light illuminating all it touched to the color of blood. Dust mingled ash sifted in wisps of undulating clouds, sweeping across the barren waste of what had once been a verdant field of ripening wheat and fruit orchards.

He was paralyzed into stillness, held fast by a wave of grief he'd kept at bay these last years, still overwhelming in its immensity, making him concentrate simply on breathing so as not to fall to his knees before the ruined, abandoned bodies of his wife and son, as he had the first time he'd ventured here. A desperate race against the Praetorian detachment.

The corpses were little more than ragged, rotted remains now, charred skeletons still hanging suspended from the stone overhead, the dry wind blowing from the west on sunset's whim making their limbs, the tatters of their clothing sway in a gross parody of movement.

He never even heard the women approach. The next thing he saw, however, was Nemhyn, contriving a stand out of one of the desecrated flower pots that had once held blossoms of geraniums and peonies. She stepped up onto her makeshift stool between the two bodies, never flinching from the grotesquely incinerated remains, and cut viscously through first one hempen tether, and the other with a dagger that was too finely wrought and dangerous looking to have come out of a healer's kit. He stepped back as the bodies of this wife and son landed in pitiful heaps at his feet.

She offered no explanation, jumping down from the overturned flowerpot, her eyes wide and unblinking, cold fury plain across her face, walking back to the wagon, presumably to deposit the dagger back from whence it had been hidden. Civilians were not supposed to carry weapons like that, even ceremonial ones.

"There should be enough stone scrap to gather for a pyre," Maeve said softly, from behind him. "We will help you arrange their remains appropriately." She moved off toward the ruins of the front courtyard. He followed mindlessly, not thinking, not wanting to feel. Nemhyn joined them moments later, silent as she bent to gather tinder and rock in sufficient amounts to accomplish this most somber of tasks--laying the remains of the dead to rest.

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It was full night by the time they completed the humble mounds of stone, fueled by dry wood from the surrounding poplars, piling the bones of wife and son atop the pyres. They set each afire and a sad melancholy engulfed the two women who stood on one side of the burning flames, across from the lone figure of Maximus.

They watched the dancing light and rising smoke turn to ash what had once been the embodiment of a beloved wife and treasured son--the family of the man who now hazed emptily into the licking flames, his face masked by alternating patterns of shadow and light.

He was tired. As it hadn't for some weeks, the weight of the last two years suddenly seemed unbearably heavy upon his heart. Too many un-necessary deaths, lives lost for no reason, his wife and son being the first. Marcus, Cicero, Proximo, Lucius, and so many others simply rounding the rest of them out. He mourned them all, unable to let them go because the fist that had clenched itself around his soul, that had gradually been loosening since Genova, refused to release its hold on him completely. It strangled his grief, rather, extinguishing his anger, and rendering him numb and hollow. His eyes burned with the pressure of unshed tears, that despite his sorrow, could not seem to fall.

An unaccountable amount of time passed as the flames drew low, the scant remains of woman and child now more dust than bone. Maeve broke the spell of solemn stillness that held them with a movement of her hand as she traced an ancient blessing in the air of the pyres, murmuring in the language of the island's tribes. When she approached him around the fire, followed by her daughter, he did not move, but turned slowly to look on her with uncomprehending eyes.

There was no need to speak. Maeve's winter-pale gaze was depthless with understanding. A seeress, she could see into the hearts of men, knowing them better than they knew themselves sometimes.

It took no seeress to decipher he would maintain his solitary vigil over his wife and son for the rest of the night. She, in turn, had no more need to tell him they would leave him to his grief this one night, reconciling as best he could the memories of those he'd once held dearest.

The mother nodded once before walking back down to where the donkey had been hastily hobbled with the wagon earlier, disappearing into the darkness. The daughter followed-suit, albeit distractedly, her expression, even his noticed in his grief, strained--haunted by something she would not mention, glancing around at the impenetrable shadows of the farm's ruins.

They left him alone like that, to mourn as he would.

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The wheel of the stars turned, the hours passing in a deep silence with only the occasional stirring breeze whistling lonely and echoing over the now cold pyres and deserted devastation of a place once brimming with light and love. At some point in that long night, he sat, crossing his feet underneath himself, his gaze never leaving the funeral mound.

He couldn't have said when, but eventually, as with the night outside of Genova, he slept. Except that, unlike Genova, he began to dream again. Nightmares once more.

He stood by helplessly, watching Cicero meet his death, not by hanging this time, but by the slow torture of crucifixion, the vultures already picking his flesh before life fully left him.

The image shifted, and he saw Lucilla in the Imperial palace, crying out his name in appeal as two iron-armored Praetorians held her forcibly, a third dragging Lucius, struggling from her desperate grasp, cleaving the boy's head with a vicious blow to the skull.

Again the scene changed, to the arena now, and Commodus stood over him. He must have fallen, and he made to roll to his knees in the sand, reaching for his gladius, not moving quick enough as Commodus kicked it out of his grasp, subsequently using the same booted foot to step on his chest, keeping him down. There was contempt in the eyes of the mad Caesar, a sick glee upon his face as he stood over Maximus pointing his own short-sword at Maximus' throat.

"I was right, brother. You don't die, do you? That's something I find terribly vexing, but easily remedied."

So saying, he began to press the sharp point of the blade deeper into Maximus' throat. With effort, Maximus made to struggle out from whence he was pinned, but the wounds he'd already sustained weakened him dangerously. He grunted in pain as the blade bit his skin, forcing him to resist more violently, thrashing with the attempt to throw the man's foot off this chest that sat like a lead weight.

He was immobilized and hadn't the strength to struggle more. The blade bit deeper still, just above his collar-bone, moving at a downward angle with agonizing slowness.

He screamed then, in wretched misery while Commodus laughed with sadistic pleasure, plunging the blade deeper, but refusing to drive it home, his beautiful features warped to a vile semblance of humanity.

It went on and on like that, and he was powerless to plug his ears against the maniacal laughter, or escape into welcome oblivion of death as he writhed in an eternal limbo of searing torment.

He was going out of his mind, and in a last attempt to escape from the torture, he grasped the blade, its razor edges cutting his palms as he drew it the rest of the way to his heart...

Causing his eyes to pop open as he surged up to a sitting position, his hands moving to where he'd felt his life about to give way. His ragged breathing calmed s he reassured himself he was whole and living still.

Disoriented only for a moment, he regained his bearings, taking in the blackened pyres, the desolation of his lands, the hush of the night.

Suddenly catching his breath.

He must still have been dreaming, for there, sitting on a large, cut-stone fallen from the wall of the outer courtyard, she sat, her smile slow, playfully sensuous, the charcoal depths of her eyes teeming with the love they had once shared.

Surely he was still dreaming.

"Sort of," she said in her wonderfully low, throaty voice. "We meet halfway between our worlds. This is a place where I can talk to you, and you can hear me."

And hearing her voice again, seeing her as she had been in life...gods, Selene...beautiful, consummate Selene. Not beautiful perhaps, in the classical sense of Lucilla's frailty. Beautiful with the ripe, earthy voluptuousness embodying the long, lazy days of high summer in Hispania. Hearing her, seeing her, the last part of that tight fist imprisoning his bitter, empty spirit began to loosen...gradually.

"I have missed you," he rasped, his voice catching on the words.

She walked over to him, her eyes full of warmth and tenderness. "I know," and she knelt beside him, enfolding him in her arms. He marveled at her substance, embracing her, so life-like and vital.

This. He had only wanted to this, had begged the gods to be able to do this since the day he had been falsely condemned as a traitor to a man who had killed his family out of spite.

"I am sorry." It came out as a sob, choked and breathless. Only the beginning of a great torrent that shook his entire body, the well of sorrow he had held within him for so long unlocking at last. The cascade of tears soaked the material of her dress while she cradled his head against her breast like a child.

"You have nothing to be sorry for, Maximus." Her voice was smooth, soothing. "There is nothing to be sorry for because there is nothing for which you are at fault. No matter what they did, I never doubted you love, nor did your son."

The words did not calm him, for he continued to weep in harsh, wracking breaths. "I tried--," he said roughly through his tears, "--tried to reach you before they did. I failed, and because of that I ask your forgiveness."

She stroked his hair back gently, lifting his face to hers, shaking her head in mild scolding, her voice still low, tranquil. Not unlike Maeve's. "And what would you have done, Maximus, had you reached us before the Guard. You would have died too, and I would have watched you suffer before they killed me. That would have pained me more than anything else in this world or beyond, just as your grief pains me now."

Her words seem not to be heard initially as he continued to cry, holding her for how long he knew not. She said nothing else, simply absorbing his grief as it came.

And just as the cascade of waters unleashed from winter's deep freeze high in the mountains eventually weakens to a trickle from a great flood, so too did his outpouring, regaining his composure by small degrees.

When he looked up finally, he saw she was peering at him expectantly, drying the tracks of his tears with the edge of her sleeve. "I wanted to die, you know," he said, more steady than not, "when I saw what they had done to you...to our son."

"And you almost did," she replied with gentle reproach. "Twice." With her hand, she motioned around them. "You are needed here, though. Now more than ever."

He shook his head in tired resignment, moving out of her embrace slightly. "You are now going to hound me too. Telling me the dream of Rome still exists, waiting to be served."

She grasped his hand, a motion that punctuated her response, was of such fond familiarity to almost send him over the emotional brink again. "Those of us in the afterlife do not take much interest in the affairs of the living, but there are some matters, once uttered, that cannot be ignored."

She read his puzzlement, continuing with uncommon urgency. "When you fell in the arena, and everyone, Lucilla included, thought you were dead, she challenged more than the ruling parties of the Empire, but the gods as well, asking if Rome was worth one good man's life." Squeezing his hand, she concluded, "It was your life, Maximus, she meant, and her words echoed throughout eternity."

The familiar agitation was beginning to come over him once more, dissipating, and replacing the last of his grief, not soothed even by the peace of his wife's embrace. "I am beginning t feel like a man who listens' to one herald bearing the same message, and I will answer with the same words. I served Rome once and I failed in my duty to Her. Whether She is worth my life, or many lives, I will not serve Her again."

He couldn't remember ever speaking so sharply to his wife when she had been living, but as was her wont, she merely laughed in gentle amusement. "You have always been adamant in your refusal to acknowledge your talents, Maximus--whether as a leader or as a protector. Not only in this life, but your others as well."

Her quiet mirth did the trick of diffusing his irritability as he lay back down in her arms, saying with a small laugh of his own, "You knew me best to say so."

And then, the meaning of her last words sank in. He frowned, moving away slightly as before, asking, "What did you just say?"

She looked at him, holding his gaze with her own. A moment that did not last long, for what he saw looking out at him through the eyes of his wife--not his wife--made him shrink back.

He scrambled away from where She remained, seated comfortably on the ground. The outward semblance hadn't changed. She still looked like the woman who had been his wife, unruly black hair, sun-burnished skin and all. But the light over Her features, a brilliance not even the dead wore, made Her eyes reflect secrets to mysteries of a universe he could only begin to fathom.

Whatever it was he did to draw the inadvertent attention of Immortals, he needed to stop.

"Lady," he managed, not willing to grovel in obeisance, even before the likes of Her, although his heart hammered within his ribs.

He was careful though, to focus only on Her feet, the hem of the simple tan linen his wife donned around the farm. The ageless serenity of Her features was too disconcerting to look upon. He could feel Her gaze penetrate to the core of his soul.

She laughed then, startling him with its lightness, coming to stand opposite him. "Don't be so awed, Maximus. " He could hear the difference in Her voice. Deep, like his wife's, but fuller, sounding at once like the wind chasing across snow covered passes, the distant rolling thunder of a far off storm, with the delicacy of a nightingale's cry.

"This is not the first time we have met, nor will it be the last. I have watched your spirit over the centuries as you led your people across a wasteland of ice and glacier, and as you fought off invaders who threatened to destroy your precious crops in a time when hunting was still more common than harvesting.

"I have seen you as you braved vast waters to find a new land for the scattered remnants of what was once a great kingdom, destroyed by an explosion of earth and fire, buried under the sea.

"I am older than the mountains and the oceans, older even, than the stars. Yet, I am yours, as I am of all people's, and as you are mine forever. In my eyes, your spirit shines like a beacon across the eternal darkness of the underworld, for in every age have you met adversity, and in spite of loss, you have ever put the well-being of others before your own. Your selflessness has intrigued me always."

He'd been frozen into astonishment at what she was saying. Until those last words. He bared his teeth in a humorless smile. "My selflessness. Was it worth the lives of my wife and son. Did the other men who you say I've been ever lose those they loved the most? The price of duty and the illusion of dream." His cutting rage lent him courage to look on Her then, a challenge to Her boundless wisdom.

Unlike the god whom he'd confronted and defied in the eyes of Marcus Aurelius, she took no affront at his words. She was, after all, a woman--or rather all women and all living beings--and knew how to disperse even the most exacerbated of Her children's tempers.

"Almost always," she answered, "and sometimes more. Like I said, Maximus, you once lost an entire kingdom. The difference now," she said incisively, "is that you hoard you grief as a serpent her eggs, not letting it go so that you may move forward with your life." Adding as an afterthought, "And don't presume you were always a man in your other lives either."

Ignoring Her last remark, he stated with a better twist of his lips, "Are you saying my wife and son, Marcus Aurelius, Lucius, the countless others who have died for the empty cause of Rome are not worthy to be remembered and mourned."

Her response, when it came, took the rage that had briefly ignited his anger at Her, and dimmed it to a gradual shame. "Do you truly believe, Maximus," She began, coming nearer to cup his chin in Her hand, so like his wife's, so at odds with the eternal wells of Her eyes, "that you best serve their memory in this way. That I have not suffered at each death my children face, nor grieve when one causes another's life to end in violence and pain."

Such was the limitless compassion of Her tone, Her eyes, that He could only swallow helplessly, begging for a response adequate to the feeling of Her words. He found he could do nothing else, but drop slowly to his knees in self-defeat, her words breaking through the last remaining resistance of his soul.

"You humans are a strange lot, thinking it a great triumph to seek another's death, when in truth, the challenge has ever been to help others in living.

"You will do this thing, " She commanded. "Go to Britannia. Find a reason to not simply survive, but to live again. Help the few others who struggle to preserve the security of Rome along Her borders even while she decays from within."

He tried, once, as he had with the god possessing Marcus Aurelius in his first dream, to shake off Her hands. It was nigh impossible though, to break Her grip upon his chin, to deny the power of Her touch, pulsing with the heat of life, chilled by a trace of death.

"You deny Rome, and you deny yourself, Maximus. Her dream has ever existed amongst the nations She has brought together under one name; not a perfect dream, but one with great possibility. Some rulers, like your beloved Marcus Aurelius, realized this and worked toward re-awakening the dream amidst Her people. Honor his life, and that dream, with the life given back to you. You have had your vengeance, endured your sorrow for those you have lost. Do not waste your gifts abetting scars that will only embitter you more as the years go by."

He was shaken. What could he say, decry Her words in futility, denounce their mistaken notion of a belief he insisted was as dead to him as his wife and son.

But he had looked into Her eyes, seen what he had been, the lives he'd led before, the feats accomplished. In exhausted submission, he said, "I will, then. I will do as you say. I don't know how, but I will try."

Gods, he was tired. One learned as a slave to build a shell around that deepest feeling part of the soul. It was necessity if one wished to survive. Anger had been so much easier, vengeance a much clearer path.

But Lucilla had come to him that last time in Rome, cracking that cocoon, making him believe again, in the idea of a Republic she said she shared with her father.

Cicero's death, his failed escape, evidence of her betrayal, smothered his remaining hope of serving a higher cause than revenge. His noble, re-inspired duty had suddenly came down to simply seeing Commodus die, trying to protect Lucius.

Discovering the boy, too, had died, withered any last caring part of him--a final hope he'd salvaged something for the burgeoning Empire.

Until now. Hope may not have been re-awakened, but She had drained the festering bitterness, removed the last brick from the wall encasing his disillusionment. Perhaps, ideals, may in time, be re-born.

He was still tired though.

The hand that cupped his chin moved over his eyes. "Sleep then, Maximus." Her voice was temptingly hypnotic. "You have laid your wife and son to rest. You are done here. The road before you still lies undetermined, but when you awaken, you will at least have accepted new direction. Do not fail me in this. You never have before."

Whatever, Whoever She was, his wife, or something more, lay back with him on the dusty, rock strewn ground. He felt cradled in the arms of the earth, blanketed by the stars over-head, a faint humming beat echoing the rhythm of his heart, lulling him into the deep, dreamless peace of oblivion.

***********************************************

The morning dawned, glaring to his eyes, and he blinked them open in response to the brightness of the world around him. Still desolate, there was no familiar sound of birdsong t greet the sun's rise, only the faint breeze moaning like lost, lonely souls, scattering the remaining ashes off the funeral mounds. He rose, gazing hard at the cremation pyres for some moments, rubbing eyes that felt like they too had been burned to tinder--gritty and dry.

The images of the night came back in muddled form--Commodus' laughter, his wife's raven-black hair, Lucilla's scream of terror as the Guard snatched away her son.

The fact he'd supposedly lived other lives, that he'd seen each one pass in the keen clarity of Her eyes as She enjoined him to salvage a dying Empire, the remnants of a far greater Dream, on the distant shores of the northern isles.

Absurdly, the realization he'd supposedly not always been a man in those other lives.

That last made him grin briefly. He'd have been the brunt of many a joke from his fellow gladiators had they heard it.

He turned to walk back down the causeway, stepping over the remains of shattered pottery and tipped flower pots, shaking his head in befuddlement. He hadn't known people even led more than one life.

Or that goddesses had a sense of humor. He was sure that was shy she said it, to ease his grief, lighten his unsettled heart.

He came upon the women rolling their sleeping mats, arranging their miscellaneous objects in the back of the wagon for the journey north.

Maeve, standing by Hercules' head, handed him a chunk of bread and the canteen of barely-water. "You look about as well rested as my daughter, Spaniard."

He glanced over at Nemyhn, noting the shadows beneath her drawn features, harsh against the pallor of her skin. She was busy buckling the last of the fastenings of the donkey's harness.

"Strange," he commented. "I feel better rested than I must look."

Which won him a wilting glance from Nemhyn. Maeve smiled faintly, asking, "More tranquil this morning, are we?"

"More...accepting," he amended.

The younger woman, giving them each a dark look, stated sharply, "Wonderful. Do you suppose we could, perhaps, get on the road. Hercules and I, both, have had our share of this...place," looking about their surroundings with that same haunted expression from the night before.

He was puzzled when she climbed into the back of the wagon, rolling out a pallet, while her mother took the reigns up front. "Are you getting on, Spaniard," asked the older woman.

He nodded absently, arranging himself as comfortably as the wooden bench seat at the wagon's front afforded. "What's she doing back there?"

"Sleeping," was the succinct answer. Maeve twitched the reigns, and Hercules picked up with a trot that reflected the beast's own alacrity to be away from the deserted ruins. "Nemhyn had a rather restless night," she continued in a casual fashion. "Some of us are given the gift to peer, once a while into the future. Others of us," she finished, looking side-long at her recumbent daughter, "are sensitive to images from the past--especially those that linger in a place like this. Neither is an easy gift to live with."

And I talk to the dead in my dreams, attracting the attention of Immortals. Ought I have expected an answer more commonplace, he wondered sarcastically.

But he only nodded in silence. Maeve's explanation disturbed him, though it explained her daughter's abstracted mannerisms from the evening before, along with the beast's odd behavior. Hercules, unflappable Hercules, halting halfway up the entrance-path, refusing to go further.

Some people believed that spirits dwelt in the places of their death, and that animals seemed hyper-aware of such atmospheres.

He wondered if this might not be the reason why, after two years, his own lands still remained unoccupied. Normally, they would have passed into the ownership of the Emperor after his supposed execution, to be allotted to another aspiring commander or civil administrator who had accomplished a task worth of property ownership.

No one, at least no human presence from what he could tell, examining the charred desolation of the surrounding acreage, the crumbling ruins of the buildings as they moved out onto the larger main road east, had cultivated the lands since their destruction.

Some morbid impulse made him want to ask Nemyhn what she had seen in the shadow-obscured veils of the night.

"Don't," Maeve advised curtly, sensing his urge. "It's better for you not to know, and for her not to tell it. At least not right now."

His only response was to incline his head once, looking back quickly where her daughter lay, her shawl pulled across the upper half of her form, her head pillowed in one arm. "Maybe someday," Nemyhn spoke in a sleep-heavy voice. "When it's not quite so recent."

Maximus didn't know if she meant more recent for her sake, or his own, in regards to the odd night just past. He decided, wisely, to leave it at that, allowing himself, instead, to be lulled by the incessant motion of the wagon, as Maeve turned the donkey north at a crossroads.

Like watching the unfolding of a rose, dawn's light inviting it petals to drink the taste of the sun, the sparse, desolate fields transformed, perceptibly, to crops of swaying, ripened wheat, vast expanses of vineyards. They'd moved into a hillier region, the slightly inclining slopes awash with olive trees, their pungent odor mingling with the sweeter scent emanating from the orchards of orange groves now in full fruit, scattered across the rolling hills in clusters.

Harvesters were emerging from their humble cottages to greet the morning, taking to the road in preparation for the coming day's labor. Some waved or called out in the good natured halloo of farm-folk, eliciting an answering wave from Maeve. He was calmed by the pastoral setting, found himself waving back to the field workers as well.

"We go to Britannia, then," he asked after a time.

The older woman nodded, her eyes on the road. "We go home." There was evident relief in her voice.

Silence ensued again. A peaceful contentment which permeated as he and Maeve swayed to the motion of the wagon. Welcome after last night, but temporary he feared. All the more to be cherished while it lasted--this peace.

The world had taken on a golden cast, dawn turning to later morning. They rode under a stretch of maples, the umbrella of shade their leaves provided offering some barrier from the already rising heat.

"I think," Maeve began cautiously, as though reluctant to broach the subject, disturb this new-found contentment, "we will need to come up with some explanation when we arrive in Britannia for how we came across you."

Unsurprised, he asked obliquely, "The servant story won't work?"

She glanced at him, a quick turn of her head, irony in her eye. "Only if you intend to remain silent while you're on the isle, Maximus...Lucius."

He cocked an eyebrow her way.

"When you speak, you do not sound like a servant." It wasn't quite an admonishment.

The wagon made its way over a small footbridge spanning a trickling brook, disrupting two ganders from their forging. The birds took to flight with noisy quacks, their neck feathers catching the sunlight with emerald luster.

"Oh for blood's sake," came the angry outburst from the back of the wagon, causing Maeve to jump slightly, and Maximus to look back around at Nemhyn, each of them thinking she'd been long asleep.

Figuring it was the ducks that had disturbed her, their figures but dots upon the horizon by now as the fowl flew south, he offered in a parody of helpfulness, "You know, it's unfortunate you don't carry a bow and arrows with you. Think how easy it would be to silence any creature daring to bother your napping."

At her best, Nemhyn, in the morning, was irritable until she woke up more. On little sleep, fatigued and worn looking, she was downright volatile, making the teasing in his voice too much for her to tolerate good-naturedly.

She sat up on her elbow, glaring at him furiously. "I could just shoot you. You're a whole lot closer and much more antagonizing."

Taking in her appearance, the smirk she was trying to keep off her countenance, Maximus found it too difficult to react to her threat with any other than stifled laughter. Her hair, usually plaited and coiled neatly at her nape, was doing its best to come undone, the unfettered curls falling about her face, lines across her cheek where the fabric of her shawl had imprinted her skin while she'd been lying down. A beguiling picture actually, despite the angry glint in her eye when she noticed the way he was looking at the disorderly state of her hair.

Rather explosively, she said, "Oh for the love of Brigid, just laugh and get it over with Spaniard," rolling her eyes, laying back down with a thump. "Your going to give yourself apoplexy if you don't. I'm used to it, my brothers used to call me Medusa locks in the morning."

He needed no more urging, taking Maeve's lead as the younger woman's mother burst out with a guffaw of her own, saying between hiccoughs, "It's true. Of course, her brothers also had to wait until their teen-years to replace the teeth they lost when calling her so. Be warned, she still suffers from such harsh child hood memories." The affectionate ribbing toward her daughter was not lost to Maximus, although the only response from the back of the wagon was a sigh of frustration.

The levity of the moment passed into a peaceful quiet as the trio and their wagon were moving up the deepening gradations of the foothills, entering the mountainous passes of central Hispania. The air would hold more of a chill tonight than in the past weeks.

He brought the conversation back to where Maeve had left off before Nemhyn's outburst. "What did you have in mind exactly, regarding my re-invented past?"

"Well," Maeve started, the winter-ice eyes warming to an almost girlish-eagerness. "I was thinking..."

She simply gleaned far too much enjoyment from concocting these stories, a point he became increasingly convinced of as she went on. Listening without comment, he let her fill in the details as they rode higher into the mountains, biting back the occasional protest rising to his lips.

When she finished, she was looking at him with expectancy, her disconcerting eyes pale against the dark sheen of her hair. She was careful to keep Hercules at a slower gait the narrower the ridge they traversed became.

He was silent for a long time, considering. He knew his cooperation was needed in this, and he remembered, with sudden explicit lucidity, his words binding him to the Spirit inhabiting the shade of his wife, but--

"Fine. If I agree to this, what then. What is in store for me when we arrive to Londinium?"

"I don't know," was Maeve's casual, unconcerned response. "Even She wasn't able to reveal that. We'll have to see when we get there."

He looked at her sharply, berating himself for still being caught off-guard by her revelations. "How did you--," he cut off, disgruntled. She was a seeress, he should have expected she would know, if not all that had transpired in his dream--if that was a dream--then at least the fact he'd been visited by another of the Shining Ones.

She handed him the reigns for a moment, pulling her mantle closer around head and shoulders to fend off the coolness of the mountain air. Her summer dress, long, but thin and sleeveless, was little protection form the elements. It made him wonder if they had an extra cloak to spare for the evening. A trivial thought, quickly lost in light of their discourse.

"Maximus, how can I help but not know. I have spent my life, the better part of it anyway, serving Her in one form or another. It is Her healing aspect I give the most credence to, a path my daughter has chosen as well, but Her other gifts, my Sight, are blessings cultivated not through practice and art, but intuition and instinct. Believe me, I know when the shadow of Her hand has touched another."

He shifted further back into the seat, the physical movement an indication of his dissatisfaction with her answer. "I might be thought dead by the world, Maeve, but whether or not I've attracted the notice of some deity I'm not even sure I believe in, on a more practical level, if my identity were to be discovered, say tomorrow, my status would revert back to that of a slave quicker than I'd like to think. That gives you a hold over me, one I'm not entirely comfortable with."

She replied evenly, "No less than the one you have over myself and my daughter...or Lucilla for that matter." Acknowledging his puzzlement, she explained, "We have essentially stolen Imperial property--you being the item in question--right from underneath the grand arch of the Empire's Roman nose. I find it hard to believe you hadn't realized that before now."

The thought had actually crossed his mind once on the way to Genova, though it had been less eloquently put, and drowned by the remorse he wasn't sure, even now, had been entirely reconciled, despite the newfound serenity of his heart.

A serenity that didn't mitigate the disquiet he was beginning to feel. "You're depending a lot on empty faith, aren't you?"

Something kindled in her usually untouchable gaze, only for a second, before it was suppressed. "No empty faith. My Sight may not always reveal the most obvious path, but it tells me when I am headed in a right direction."

"Am I a right direction, then?" That thought was no more comforting than any of their prior discussion was turning out to be.

His words brought a quick half-smile to her face. "Rest assured, Spaniard. Whatever happens when we reach Londinuim, I'm not about to let you fall back into the shackles of slavery. Too much has been expended in this endeavor for me to let that happen."

He studied her profile intently before nodding, turning to face forward. He hadn't really been asking for the re-assurance, but her speaking it laid to rest some of his rising anxiety.

The sun was reaching its zenith, glinting off the distant heights of the snow-caps towering above them, turning the world into a luminescence of crystalline radiance. Spruce and pine grew in disseminated patches along the rocky slopes, their needles lending the air a tangy redolence.

"My life is my own," he stated after a time, watching a hawk circle the currents at its leisure, high above the rising, jagged summits piercing the vibrant blue sky. It sounded like he was asking her permission, and that annoyed him.

"In so far as your conscious lets it be, yes."

He sniffed at that sardonically, looking out at the road which had become more a terrace, its edge dropping away abruptly the higher into the moutons they climbed. From where he was seated, he couldn't see how far down it went to the bottom, or how steep the side. Much like my future. Unknowing of what he was stepping into, he couldn't discern what the next few months might bring his way.

He'd been a slave too long, living a life from one day to the next, one match to the next, existing in the present because that had been all he'd possessed. A slave had no future unless he was freed, had no past for it was too painful to think of what one had lost when the bolt locking the chains was hammered into place each night. It was difficult to conceive of imminent prospects when all one had lived for was the here and now. It brought a certain anticipation.

An anticipation not helped along by a comment arising from the he back of the wagon, said in the dulcently mocking intonation of Nemhyn's voice, "You can always muck stalls, Spaniard. If you're still in quandary as to your uncertain future by the time we reach Britannia, I mean."

"Now there's a thought," he responded in kind, still looking ahead. "Engendered by a goddess to salvage the remnants of a Republic, and I end up mucking stalls instead. Aren't you supposed to be sleeping," he asked, turning around finally to look down at her.

She gazed up at hi with an impudent expression. "Between the wagon rolling over every possible crack and stone in the road, and you and mother jabbering away like old women--no offense mother--at the baths, I could rival the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus for the peace I've had."

"You're right," he said, side-wise to her mother, "she is a little touchy with no sleep, isn't she."

"I told you," Maeve replied, a smile breaking over her features.

Nemhyn, gazing up at the sky, shading her eyes with one hand, the other pillowing her head, carried on with her original thought, as though talking to herself, "Of course, that means you would actually have to clean the stalls this time."

"I cleaned up after Hercules," he responded in feigned insult.

"Right," she grunted, squinting up at him. "Stabbing once at a turd with the pitchfork like a timid Vestal, then letting me clean the rest of the piles doesn't count, Spaniard."

"It's not my fault you were never satisfied with my attempts."

"Never satisfied," she chided, sitting up, unkinking the knots in her back and combing back disheveled curls with her fingers. "The donkey would have been up to its knees in shit by the time we reached Tarraco, and Theseus would have catapulted us each overboard for slopping his lower deck if I hadn't finished your work." Her eyes were dancing with mirth, adding, "You know, for a man who was a soldier and a gladiator, you have a suprisingly delicate sensibility when it comes to animal feces."

"Right," he rejoined, "that's because I've always preferred the front ends of animals, not the back."

She caught the way he was looking at the loosened strands of her hair again, and she drew her shawl over her head with a glowering expression, the red-gilt locks poorly covered by the square of woolen cloth. "Shut-up. I know what you're about to say," she warned, although she was trying as desperately as he was to not laugh.

About to deny that he was going to call her anything resembling a snake-headed woman from classical legend, his reply was superseded by Maeve, sighing like a heroine out of Greek tragedy. "If this is what I have to listen to while we cross to Rutupiae, I might indeed go mad."

"You could always be the simple country girl, Mother," Nemhyn offered.

"Or the servant," Maximus added in innocent jest.

The older woman gave each of them a cautioning look, saying, "Don't mock an old lady's age. Besides," she said, pulling back on the reigns as they began to wind down a gradual decline, "you two still have yet to decide who cleans up after Hercules for this trip."

Maximus looked at Nemhyn. Nemhyn looked at Maximus.

They hit upon the same thought at the same time, the unspoken agreement making Nemhyn's lips quirk in an unabashed smile, the green glints of her hazel eyes dancing with humor while he began to chuckle, turning to the her mother, suggesting, "Actually, we were thinking you could--"

"Don't even imply it," Maeve cut him off, in exaggerated menace, setting them all to laughter, the sounds of the trio's shared jocularity rising up over the mountain peaks, echoing off the rock-bound, tree-covered slopes as they continued towards the northern coast.

*****************************************************

They came to port in Ruputiae during the second month of Pertinax's reign, high summer along the pebble strewn beaches of the Mediterranean, where Helios cast his gold-imbued rays upon aqua waters while merchants, fisher-folk, and the like took advantage of the calm seas to forward their business ventures, haul in the ample catch.

Elsewhere, particularly across the northern channel, its waters never having mimicked the glass-like calm of its more southerly cousin, even in summer, men still went about their business, tilling fields, attending assembly, drilling or campaigning, intent on making ends meet for family or friend, whether peasant farmer, artisan, soldier or magistrate. But, just as the settlers along the Danube and the Rhine had learned to do, so too did the inhabitants of the isle, Roman and Briton alike, turn wary eyes ever northward toward the lands across the Wall. The lands ruled by the Caledonii, never conquered by Roman might.

Little peace would have been afforded had any of the island's populace, or the wider expanse of the Empire's citizenry known what those who controlled Her fate did: that the Empire was a much less stable place than it had been, even five years ago. War reverberated on the winds, a whisper, like the ardent promise of a lover, inaudible as yet, but growing in pitch from the deserts of the east, across the barren dunes of the African provinces, whirling across to Italia, sweeping over the spine of the country, the verdant pasturage and meadows of Gaul, through the dense forests of Germania, to the moors and highland plateaus of Britannia.

Mist encloaked cliffs, moisture imbued shale rock, and a green of fen and heathland so verdant that the flush of emerald could only have been rivaled by a jewel, and perhaps not even that. Thick, billowing clouds, a soft drizzle, and cold, damp air. These were the sights, the sensations greeting Maximus as he stepped off the passenger vessel onto the southern coast of Britannia, leading Hercules, Maeve walking on the other side of the donkey, her daughter following behind, by the wagon. A port-side city, more a military fort, though a permanent one, Ruputiae may not have been as sprawling as Genova, or as grand as Tarraco, but she still boasted a harbor abounding with ships, cargo vessels, military supply crafts, along with the potpourri of businesses, and civilian establishments that accompanied such a settlement. She even had her own pharos some miles down the coast.

The small group was swept into the dockside crowd, passing under a four-way arch, marbled pillars and bronze carvings telling of Claudius and his triumphant military conquest of Britannia. Though there was little possibility of recognition, Maximus was careful to keep a distance between himself and the company of Dacian conscripts walking ahead.

He moved with an odd feeling of unreality, still not quite believing he was here--the mood lending him a detached interest that had come to characterize his countenance more often than the dour glum of the recent months. Not since Tarraco had he felt like that actually.

Maeve, from across the donkey's back, said, "Remember, things are different now, Spaniard. I'm not about to abandon you to the whims of fate after bringing you all this way."

He looked over at her calmly, then back at her daughter. "So long as the whims of fate don't leave me mucking stalls, I'm fine."

Maeve chuckled at that, and her daughter even smiled briefly, tiredly. The lift and roll of the waves during their crossing had not been kind to the contents of Nemhyn's stomach, and she looked pinched, skin drawn tight over cheek bones. Her mother seemed unconcerned as usual, as long familiar with her daughter's physical aberrations as she was with her short-strung temperament.

The relief of both women to be back to their homeland was almost palpable though, for a tension had gone out of Maeve's bearing that he hadn't even been aware of until now, a relaxation over Nemhyn's visage. The look of ones familiar to a place filled with fond memories, at ease, sure in their reception as to the path available to them. This was their home, their country. He envied them, their growing assuredness the further from the ports they walked with the press of the crowd. It made him feel displaced and out of sorts.

He had to grasp the lead tighter as Hercules jerked his head up in starlment, two boys breaking through the crowd, street-urchins from the looks of their ragged clothing, darting around the wagon and donkey, dodging between other passers-by in their haste to escape an on old woman coming after them with a broom, her face caked with mud, calling out in anger, "You little rats, I'll skin your hides next time you try to cheat old Hulda!"

Maeve watched the scene transpire, shaking her head in vague amusement as they passed a row of retailers in the small market square, a tanner's stall, a wool-treaters shop. When she looked at him, the intensity of her gaze backed the sincerity of her words, discerning his irresolute thoughts. "You will find a place for yourself as well, Spaniard. You won't always feel like an outsider amongst strangers here," she reassured, ever the seeress.

"No mucking stalls," he attempted lightheartedly. He heard Nemhyn's giggle from behind.

"No mucking stalls," Maeve answered back with mock-solemnity.

With no frivolity this time, he said, "No arms for Rome. I didn't say I wouldn't serve Her, but no arms."

The older woman's answer was not half-so satisfying this time. "That we'll have to leave to fate, Spaniard."

He scowled briefly, saying nothing, shrugging. He was studying the posterior gates they were coming to, dividing the fort's access from the surrounding countryside, contemplating the road that passed under the stone cupola supported between the two watch towers of the fortified granite bulwarks. Contemplating too, the symbolism of that road which headed out, one could have said, into the unknown. Unknown countryside, unknown future.

"All roads lead to Rome," he voiced in spontaneous irony.

Maeve gave him a significant glance, leaving it for her daughter to correct him.

"Not here," Nemhyn said. He looked back at the younger woman quizzically. "Here," she clarified, "all roads lead to Londinium." She spoke in all seriousness, her own expression weighted with an irony that rivaled perfectly, the feeling of his words.

Until she graced him with a smile that brightened her chiseled features to a refulgent comeliness, so often disguised by the prickly temper, the simple appearance of her garb. "Welcome to Britannia, Spaniard."

To which he could only respond as was appropriate for a lady, bowing his head in acknowledgment of her salutation with a slight smile of his own, before turning back to face the stretch of dirt-packed road before him, donkey and wagon entow, women on either side.

On their way to the closest river outlet where they would catch barge to Londinium, the trio was passed by a large cohort of cavalry troops, bearing a standard specific to the detachment, along with the emblems of the XI Augusta, galloping en route, presumably to the provincial capital as well. Their helmets flashed with silvery-iron sheen in the small amount of sunlight trying to creep from behind an over-cast sky, their crimson capes, sweeping out behind them in the uprush of wind resulting from their rapid pace, brilliant crimson against yellow-green fields of the lowlands. The urgency with which the mounted troops rode signaled something was in the air, a dire possibility of coming conflict, and peace, a transient gift to be valued while it lasted.